Designing Livable Transit-Oriented Development: A Multi-Stakeholder Choice Experiment on Street-Level Trade-Offs

Transit-oriented development (TOD) has emerged globally as a central planning paradigm for reducing automobile dependence and fostering sustainable, accessible, and liveable cities, yet its application in the Gulf region remains limited and underexplored.This study investigates how microscale streetscape attributes influence public acceptance of prospective TOD environments in Muscat, Oman, in the context of the city's planned bus rapid transit (BRT) system.Using a stated-preference survey with photorealistic visual scenarios, data were collected from residents and commercial users across four prospective BRT station areas-Al Mabailah, Burj Al Sahwa, Ghala, and Ruwi.Respondents completed a series of paired comparison tasks evaluating nine built-environment attributes, including sidewalk width, tree-canopy cover, pedestrian-crossing frequency, cycling facilities, building height, land-use mix, faade treatment, parking layout, and setbacks.The models were estimated separately for residents and commercial stakeholders using multinomial logit techniques, with results presented in the form of part-worth utilities and relative importance rankings.The findings demonstrate consistent and statistically robust preferences for wider sidewalks, frequent pedestrian crossings, and shaded environments, underscoring the primacy of walkability and thermal comfort in shaping public support for TOD.Attributes such as active frontages, inset parking, and balanced land-use mixes were also positively valued, while preferences regarding building height and setbacks were more context-dependent.Importantly, the study highlights that TOD in hot-arid cities requires careful attention to human-scale design factors alongside traditional density and land-use considerations.The conclusions emphasize that Muscat's BRT rollout represents a unique opportunity to embed TOD principles, provided that policy and design decisions prioritize street-level quality and user comfort, thereby advancing a more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient urban future for the city.