RIGHT OF WAY CATEGORY AND ITS ROLE IN ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONING OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT IN CONTEMPORARY CITY

Abstract

Public transport is one of the strategic priorities for achieving sustainable development goals. The role of public transport in cities and urban areas and its competitiveness in comparison with individual (primarily motorized) transport depends on its convenience for daily travel. The primary objective of any transportation system is to reduce the time required to cover a distance, taking into account the traffic safety. Therefore, the speed and predictability of travel is not only the indicator for the efficiency of a transport mode or a particular route, but also directly affects people’s daily travel choices. It is worth stating the need to prioritize public transport not only at the level of declaring strategic goals, but also directly amongst the urban space at the operational level. At the same time, given the current pace of construction of rapid public transport in cities, in particular the metro, the critical need to prioritize street-running transport, primarily the tramway, comes to the fore. In this article, the author hypothesizes that the presence of a separate right of way for public transport lines is not an only crucial criterion for the efficiency of such a system. The article is divided into two logical components. At the first stage, the author studies the Ukraine’s regulatory framework for ensuring the priority of public transport in the organizational, legal and infrastructural fields, as well as analyzes and expands the theoretical contributions of transport scientists in the field of public transport prioritization. The second stage consists of thematic mapping using QGis software of the current 45 tramway networks in 105 cities in Europe, North America, and Australia in terms of separated right of way from the roadways. For City of Kyiv, the tramway network was analyzed as of 1975, 2022 (including separately the right- and left-bank networks), as well as its alleged future state. The results of the spatial analysis are summarized in a table of city rankings by the coefficient of tramway traffic prioritization.