Implications of Transport Diversity for Quality of Life

Abstract

Different transport stakeholders have different needs for transport infrastructure and services. Meeting the needs of stakeholders implies a tradeoff of benefits and costs between supply and demand and creates issues of transport diversity. However, the literature has largely ignored these issues. This study aims to provide a framework evaluating transport diversity to promote quality of life. Transport diversity is defined as the satisfied level of stakeholder needs in this study and measured as the gap between the expected goal and present values of stakeholder needs in the form of the Shannon–Weaver index. Transport diversity can assess whether the level to which important needs are satisfied equitably, and monitor whether the transportation system is moving toward sustainability via confirming the targets and the basic level of quality of life. This study hopes that the conceptual framework developed can assist decision makers in understanding the relationship between transport diversity and sustainability, and provide a new assessment method for improvements in quality of life.