Roads for Sustainable Cities – What Is Wrong with Us?

Abstract

When ‘roads for sustainable cities’ are to be considered, firstly, the sustainability of roads should be brought into discussion. As an initiative, a road user behaviour study was conducted in a busy suburban area outside South-Eastern city limits of Colombo. The study area consisted of heterogeneous vehicle composition; typically combined with high proportion of motorcycles and three-wheelers which are poor in adhering to road rules that can commonly be seen in most South Asian developing countries. Although heavy investments are utilized in road improvement projects in these countries, the outcomes gained often seems to be unsatisfactory. The intent of this study was to find out the reasons for this unsatisfactory outcomes of the investments spent on road improvement projects and suggest measures to overcome these unsatisfactory outcomes for sustainability. The study was conducted in two parts; (i) road user behaviour study, and (ii) field consultation study. Through the road user behaviour study, the undesirable practices of all road users such as passenger vehicles, motorcycles, three-wheelers, buses, trucks, pedestrians and excessive noise were directly identified. It was seen from the consultation study results that the varied expectations of different categories of road stake holders were different from category to category and biased towards their advantage. Finally, through this study it was observed that the maximum benefits expected from investing on road improvement projects are not fully realized when poor road user practices are adopted by the stake holders’.