Public Transport Management in Smart Environmental Protection – Case Study of Subotica, Serbia

Abstract

Energy consumption of transport sector in Serbia is estimated at 32% of final national energy consumption. The road transport consumes approximately three quarters. This consumption produced a poor quality of life, which means that it caused a real deterioration of public health through increase of respiratory diseases and the worsening of cancer risks, etc. Moreover, according to the National Agency of Environmental Protection, the traffic of Serbian public transport would be responsible for at least 42% of the emissions of CO, NOX and PM.

In this paper authors expand previous research by introducing private and special vehicles and measure their impact on the city health apart from the impact of public transport. Reducing the number of vehicles in the transport chain, reducing the number of traffic accidents and improving living conditions in the city are just few tasks to be executed in sustainable way. Challenges like reduction of pollutants, noise reduction and decreasing the degree of vulnerability of habitat are addressed simultaneously solving the multiple criteria programming problem. The coefficients of the observed constraints are modeled using fuzzy values, i.e. linguistic expressions due to short periods of observation and non-normal distributions. We measure the age, number, fuel consumption and estimate the average millage for private, public and ambulance transport within the Subotica city limits and estimate the impact on environment measured by indicators available for the city, namely air and water pollution and number of lung deseases. These issues are a part of more profound problem of urban transformation which relates to a multitude of urban sustainability issues, ranging from segregation and growing social tensions to local traffic problems, solid waste generation and the large consumption of energy and material in developed countries.