A balanced scorecard for performance evaluation of sustainable urban transport

Sustainability performance issues are increasingly crucial, especially in the urban transport sector. Urban transport sector’s complex involvement with multiple attributes of society, environment and economy, multiple objectives targeted by multiple stakeholders as well as the continuous need to adapt, learn and innovate, traditionally it has been a very challenging task for transport policy makers and regulators to effectively measure and manage sustainability performance. Despite the immense need, an effective management of sustainability performance has not been adequately focussed in the literature. This paper develops an integrated framework for strategic performance evaluation of sustainable urban transport (SUT) using the Balanced Scorecard (BSC). Considering an integrated set of performance attributes of urban transport, including sustainability, stakeholder interest, process excellence, organization, learning and innovation, the BSC for SUT is developed through sequential methodological steps including the identification of performance attributes, integration of sustainability, development of perspectives and themes, integration of stakeholder interests and concerns, the choice of indicator properties, the choice of indicator development approach and the development of indicators. A performance measurement method is developed using a triangulation approach that quantitatively measures sustainability performance of urban transport. The BSC for SUT is demonstrated using the case of Singapore urban transport. An examination of the consistency of the performance obtained from BSC with the real-life in-depth review for all indicators indicates that an effective evaluation of sustainability performance in urban transport can be achievable using BSC. This paper concludes that through a balanced integration of essential parameters of sustainability along with their supporting drivers the BSC may establish an effective path in strategic performance evaluation of sustainable urban transport.

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