Developing Transportation Livability-Related Indicators for Green Urban Road Rating System in Taiwan
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper put forward four TLI indicators that meet the regional characteristics by AHP and WSM, and determined the key obstacles that affect the implementation of indicators. The achievements can effectively promote the evaluation of green urban road. Otherwise, the authors has done a lot of work in literature analysis. However, there are still some suggestions for the author to consider if necessary.
-some parts of the paper are redundant and not concise enough, such as 3.2.2.
-There are some mistakes of the charts/tables citation, e.g., page 4 Line 173, etc.
-The establishment of indicators can be obtained through past construction experience and practice. How to specifically integrate indicators into the design and construction of new traffic planning or road infrastructure reconstruction in the future?
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your time and effort to help review our manuscript and provide your valuable comments to improve our work. All suggested correction and concerns from you have been addressed in the manuscript and the detail response of each comment is presented below. Also, the revised manuscript is also attached in the document.
Point 1: Some parts of the paper are redundant and not concise enough, such as 3.2.2.
Response 1: Subsection 3.2.2 and other parts of the paper were improved in the manuscript.
Line 271-277, 281-285 on page 9:
“The questionnaire form was first produced in English and then translated into Taiwanese to enable more involvement from the local experts, who may not be well-versed in English. The questionnaire collects expert judgments about the relative importance based on pairwise comparisons among indicators or requirements through Saaty's 9-point scale. Moreover, interviewees were asked to indicate the critical each of the nine barriers is to each indicator implementation in the Taiwan urban condition based on Likert's five scales from 1 = not critical to 5 = very critical.”
“In order to reflect the local condition in developing sustainable urban road projects, local experts were invited rather than public participation. Rating indicator importance level and barrier criticality would have placed undue demands onto a random population and probably overtaxed their competence in technical issues.”
Point 2: There are some mistakes of the charts/tables citation, e.g., page 4 Line 173, etc
Response 2: The errors in the figure/table citations occurred when converting the original manuscript into Sustainability journal-based version. These typos have been corrected in the manuscript.
Point 3: The establishment of indicators can be obtained through past construction experience and practice. How to specifically integrate indicators into the design and construction of new traffic planning or road infrastructure reconstruction in the future?
Response 3: The indicators include best practices that are generally beyond current standard requirements. Hence, these indicators can be integrated into roadway development both voluntarily and compulsorily. In the former, indicators enhance the transportation practitioner and agency awareness about sustainability and become a baseline for adopting indicators. In the latter, indicators should become a part of technical standards/specifications for urban streets' planning, design, and construction.
These contents were clarified in the conclusion section to mention the practical implications of this study from line 667 to 679 on page 23, as follows:
“The study findings hold several practical implications for practitioners and decision-makers in the transportation industry. First, TLIs may enhance the awareness of planners and designers in terms of transportation livability management at the street project level. Thus, TLIs may be an advisory baseline for adopting those sustainable practices in urban road projects. Second, the decision-makers also can tailor existing manual designs/specifications to TLI-related best practices. Integrating TLIs into the improved legal documents can compel practitioners to apply those indicators in urban road planning and design to improve the liveability performance of urban streets in Taiwan. Hence, in the transportation industry, developing LTIs in a rating system can be an intermediate step to turn state of the art in transportation livability into standard practices in planning, designing, and constructing urban streets. It is worth noting that this integrating process needs to be based on the specific conditions to select the proper practices to improve their feasibility. Indicators with a low difficulty level to their application should be prioritized at the initial stage of the integration process to encourage practitioners to apply those practices to roadway projects.”
Reviewer 2 Report
- definition of livability connected to road planning should be conceptually precised as well as other categories such as universal streets, green roads : these are too broad and confuse
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your time and effort to help review our manuscript and provide your valuable comments to improve our work. All suggested correction and concerns from you have been addressed in the manuscript and the detail response of each comment is presented in the following sections. Also, the manuscript was improved as the attached file in the document.
Point 1: Definition of livability connected to road planning should be conceptually precised as well as other categories such as universal streets, green roads: these are too broad and confuse
Response:
These definitions were added to the manuscript in the introduction section as follows:
Line 37- 45 on pages 1 and 2:
“Green roads/highways are constructional systems of roadway projects, which include five main aspects, i.e., 1) ecosystem conservation, 2) stormwater management, 3) life-cycle energy and emission reduction, 4) recycled, reused, and renewable materials and 5) overall societal management [2]. In addition to topography, environment, and ecology, green roads demand considerations to societal benefits for the community, such as safety, equity, accessibility, and public health. These aspects are generally the main contributors to livable streets [3]. The livability transportation in this research emphasizes the physical aspect of urban streets (e.g., configuration, motorized and non-motorized traffic, traffic facilities, utilities) rather than livable streets' functional and social characteristics.”
Line 50-54 on page 3:
“For the sake of providing the living or general well-being of communities, transportation livability in urban streets focuses on managing the conflict among pedestrians and motor vehicles, building dedicated lanes for public transit and bicycle modes [1]. Transportation livability also aims to create convenient accessibility and connectivity for all people, improve the transition to more environmentally sustainable modes of transport and equip street facilities and amenities [1].”
Line 69-74 on page 3:
“The universal street principle as a design aspect in the equity category requires all ur-ban streets must be easily accessible to all users, notably paying much attention to the most vulnerable peoples, e.g., disabled people, the elderly, and children [7]. In addition to typical pedestrian elements, the main components to provide universal accessibility can be pedestrian ramps, guidance for the visually impaired (e.g., tactile paving or detectable warning strips).”
Reviewer 3 Report
This study proposed the adaptive process, which integrates top-down and bottom-up approaches, to develop TLIs adaptable to the urban road programs in Taiwan. And the comprehensive list of four TLIs and nine barriers to their adoption was selected in this research, which is reasonable and adaptive. But there are some suggestions for this paper:
(1) The abstract shows “The framework proposed in this research can easily be applied to other roadway characteristics aspects in different regions/countries”. But this study only carried out experiments for urban street projects in Taiwan, so how can be seen that this approach can be applied to roadway projects in other countries/regions?
(2) There is no doubt that the procedures and results of this method can develop transportation livability-related indicators for green urban road rating system in Taiwan. But there are so many errors in the citation of this article, such as:
1) line 73 of page 4 shows “Error! Reference source not found.”
2) line 255 of page 6 shows “Error! Reference source not found.”
3) line 244 of page 8 shows “Error! Reference source not found.”
4) line 326 of page 12 shows “Error! Reference source not found.”
5) line 333 and 346 of page 13 show “Error! Reference source not found.”
6) line 372 of page 14 shows “Error! Reference source not found.”
7) line 402 and 404 of page 16 show “Error! Reference source not found.”
8) line 441 and 448 of page 18 show “Error! Reference source not found.”
9) line 470, 473 and 477 of page 20 show “Error! Reference source not found.”
10) line 493 of page 21 show “Error! Reference source not found.”
11) line 593 of page 23 show “Error! Reference source not found.”
12) line 636 of page 24 show “Error! Reference source not found.”
So the writing of this article needs to be improved, and some details also needs to be checked carefully.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your time and effort to help review our manuscript and provide your valuable comments to improve our work. All suggested correction and concerns from you have been addressed in the manuscript and the detail response of each comment is presented below. Also, the revised manuscript is also attached in the document.
Point 1: The abstract shows “The framework proposed in this research can easily be applied to other roadway characteristics aspects in different regions/countries”. But this study only carried out experiments for urban street projects in Taiwan, so how can be seen that this approach can be applied to roadway projects in other countries/regions?
Response: This content was clarified in the conclusion section to point out the future research stemming from this study.
Line 685 to 695 on page 24:
“Although this research experimented only on transportation livability characteristics of urban street projects in Taiwan, the systematic approach integrating the top-down and bottom-up methods offers a direction for further topic discussions. Researchers and rating system developers in other regions/countries could extrapolate this trans-parent and reproducible research framework to develop indicators for a sustainable roadway rating system based on the local context. When applying this framework, future works need to refer to local regulatory documents and select local experts involved in the panel discussion and the questionnaire survey for the AHP and WSM methods in such countries/regions. The selected experts should have expertise and experience related to specific indicator categories of roadway projects, such as materials, environment and ecology, economy, and society. This implication reflects the unique roadway engineering conditions in establishing adaptable indicators/requirements and allocating corresponding weights.”
Point 2: There is no doubt that the procedures and results of this method can develop transportation livability-related indicators for green urban road rating system in Taiwan. But there are so many errors in the citation of this article, such as:
1) line 73 of page 4 shows “Error! Reference source not found.”
2) line 255 of page 6 shows “Error! Reference source not found.”
3) line 244 of page 8 shows “Error! Reference source not found.”
4) line 326 of page 12 shows “Error! Reference source not found.”
5) line 333 and 346 of page 13 show “Error! Reference source not found.”
6) line 372 of page 14 shows “Error! Reference source not found.”
7) line 402 and 404 of page 16 show “Error! Reference source not found.”
8) line 441 and 448 of page 18 show “Error! Reference source not found.”
9) line 470, 473 and 477 of page 20 show “Error! Reference source not found.”
10) line 493 of page 21 show “Error! Reference source not found.”
11) line 593 of page 23 show “Error! Reference source not found.”
12) line 636 of page 24 show “Error! Reference source not found.”
Response: The errors in the figure/table citations occurred when converting the original manuscript into Sustainability journal-based version. These typos have been corrected in the manuscript.
Point 3: So the writing of this article needs to be improved, and some details also needs to be checked carefully.
Response: The writing was checked and improved, as shown in the manuscript by the “Track Change” function.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Based on the previous manuscript, the authors have reasonably supplement the specific significance and implementation of the research, revised the readability of the article and other Supporting material, which successfully flesh out the entire paper and improve its content. The paper has already been sufficient.
Reviewer 2 Report
I think that the manuscript has been sufficiently improved
and I authorize the publication.
