A Systematic Assessment of the Challenges Towards Sustainable Urban Transportation: A Case Study of the Island of Mauritius

The rapid growth of vehicles in Mauritius exhibits many transport-related problems as faced by many other developed and developing countries, such as heavy traffic congestion, road accidents, high fuel consumption and carbon emission. Despite ongoing efforts from the Government, the influx in the city centre and major towns has amplified given the fact that most industries are located in urban regions. Studies conducted for Mauritius are very limited or minimal related to land use planning (L UP) and sustainable transport. The aim of this study is to investigate into the factors contributing to the growth of unsustainable urban transport behaviours in Mauritius. The literature review and subsequent analysis led to the development of a taxonomy of land transport. This was done in order to simplify and understand the distinct dimensions of the transport sector. Moreover, the system dynamic model sheds light on various factors causing the increasing number of vehicles which is the root cause of the transport problem on the island. Furthermore, this contributed largely to identify the most appropriate strategies that can be adopted to eliminate alleviate transport problems in Mauritius. Future research using the Multi-Agent Transport Simulation software can be considered to better understand travel behaviour and travel demands of the population that will help to come with better strategies.