Regional transport disparities in Tunisia : Development of a Social Transport Sustainability Index STSI

the aim of this study is to establish a Social Transport Sustainability Index (STSI) with a view to highlighting the regional disparities in Tunisia in terms of transport. First, a set of socially relevant indicators of transport sustainability was collected and organised describing the Tunisian cities, then the indicators were normalised using the max min method, followed by the principal component analysis (PCA) method to weight the indicators and to combine them into sub-dimension indices. Finally, these sub-dimensions indices were weighted and aggregated to form the composite index specific to the social dimension of transport sustainability for each Tunisian city. The results showed that the governorates of Tunis (0.784), Ariana (0.737), Ben Arous (0.693), Manouba (0.659), Sousse (0.658) and Monastir (0.603) are the most socially sustainable in terms of transport, while the governorates of Tozeur (0. 161), Kasserine (0.194), Siliana (0.257), Le Kef (0.265), Sidi Bouzid (0.266) and Kairouan (0.295) are the least socially sustainable cities with regard to transport.