Using an integrated land use and transport planning approach for urban road design

Road safety issues in urban areas are often concentrated at locations where there is a mismatch between urban road design, local road users and neighbourhood characteristics. Although there is a general consensus in the transport planning field to address the issue of sustainable development, road design practice still tends to produce infrastructure that prioritises the needs of the private automobile.\ud The paper describes a method to use contextual information for the purpose of improved road design. The context is defined in terms of a range of land use, socio-economic, environmental and transportation information, presented spatially, which are used as inputs to a spatial multiple criteria analysis (SMCA). The results of this analysis describe the relative suitability of different modes of transport to locations along an arterial route. Using clustering analysis, sections of the routes are identified with a similar context. The cluster attributes can be used to develop proposals for road infrastructure configurations. The approach helps to bridge the gap between integrated land use and transport planning and road design. The method has been applied to a corridor in Cape Town, South Africa