Does Common Infrastructure Planning Support Better Urban Sustainability? Analysis of Mass-Transit Projects on Short-Term and Long-Term Sustainability Impacts

This research focuses on the short and long-term sustainability impacts that new mass-transit projects have on urban areas. In current practice, sustainability is primarily focused on construction and operation phases through the introduction of more sustainable constructional and operational methods, equipment, and materials. There is no sustainability-specific research dedicated to the pre-construction phase. Analysis of Canadian and Netherlands mass-transits outlines that infrastructure delivery timelines, particularly, pre-construction periods are on the rise. The non-accounted pre-construction sustainability impacts may trigger incorrect designs, constructions, and operations. As seen worldwide, the relatively cheaper “at-grade”, “above grade”, and “cut and cover” construction methods are frequently prioritized over the relatively more expensive “tunnelling”. Using a novel methodology allows coherent selection of the best for the environment, society, and economy, and thus, the most sustainable infrastructure (Kondrachova et al. in University of Toronto Mississauga rapid transit connection concept, 2022 [1]), the pre-construction planning can be optimized. Such optimization will help to reduce the pre-construction timelines and thus, to improve the sustainability of each new infrastructure toward more sustainable future urbanization.