Toward Sustainable Urban Transportation: Examining the Potential of Transport Departments in Lahore, Pakistan

The lack of institutional capacity and coordination, outdated rules and regulations, poorly perceived implementation of motorization policy, and knee-jerk approaches for transportation planning are the challenges to progress toward sustainable transportation in Lahore, Pakistan. This study evaluates the current potential of transport departments of Lahore, Pakistan toward a sustainable urban transportation system. The Benchmarking and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) approaches have been used to analyze both primary data from the relevant stakeholders through a questionnaire survey and secondary data obtained from the reports (e.g., Barella et al. [1]) and official websites. The results show that the qualitative assessment of transport departments in terms of quantitative data (internal evaluation factor) is equal to 1.712 on a scale of 4.0, which means that the current potential of transport departments has not yet grasped even the minimum requirements of achieving sustainability in urban transportation. To improve the current potential, suggestions are made to reach the desired state of sustainability in transportation in terms of improved outcomes and service delivery.