Road Safety Improvement and Sustainable Urban Mobility: Identification and Prioritization of Factors and Policies Through a Multi-Criteria Approach

Despite the significant progress in the last few decades, road safety improvement still constitutes an imperative global need. Especially in urban areas, the improvement of road safety is an even more complicated and multi-factor problem. Every minute, a human life is lost in an urban road network in the world. Given that almost all road accidents are preventable, more effective planning toward improving road safety, as a structural element of sustainable urban mobility, is imperative. The aim of the present research is to provide decision support analysts and policy-makers with a decision-support tool that identifies and prioritizes the factors undermining road safety in an urban area, with a view to developing effective policies. For this purpose, a comprehensive inventory of factors that may undermine road safety in an urban area, as well as an inventory of relevant measures and policies, is provided, based on an international literature review. The most important factors and, subsequently, the most effective measures and policies are identified and prioritized through a multi-criteria approach (modified Delphi–analytical hierarchy process (AHP)–technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS)). The Greek urban road networks, starting from the second largest city in Greece (Thessaloniki), are selected as a case study. Problems related to limited resources not allowing for systematic surveillance and policing, making arbitrary decisions instead of adopting a scientific decision-aiding methodology, education and mentality issues, infrastructure planning and maintenance, cooperation and coordination between different authorities, and laxity of penalties are highlighted as the most important factors, based on which four sets of measures and policies are identified and prioritized.