Extended Abstract:
Introduction
The rapid increase in urban population, the physical expansion of cities, and the increasing dependence of people's lives on transportation networks have made the issue of urban safety, especially in the field of citizen transportation, one of the main concerns of urban managers and planners. Like many large cities in the country, Urmia faces issues such as high traffic density, lack of road safety infrastructure, risky driver behavior, and poor monitoring of transportation flow. These challenges not only lead to an increase in traffic accidents and loss of life and property but also reinforce the feeling of insecurity and a decrease in the quality of life among citizens. Urmia, as one of the metropolises in the northwest of the country, faces serious challenges in the field of transportation safety and sustainability with rapid horizontal growth, increased dependence on private cars with a share of more than 69 percent in the transportation structure, and the concentration of traffic in central areas. This situation, in addition to threatening the quality of life and urban security, despite the city's potential capacities in developing public transportation and pedestrian-oriented spaces, doubles the need for a serious review of transportation policies and their relationship with safe city components. Despite a significant volume of research in the field of urban transportation management, few studies have purposefully examined the relationship between safe city components and transportation policies, especially in medium-sized and smaller cities such as Urmia, which face their challenges. Most of the existing studies have an analytical approach focused on metropolises and have not used a descriptive-analytical approach with case analysis at the local level. The goal of this research is to determine how Urmia's urban transportation management policies can evaluate safe city components.
Methodology
This research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of implementation. The statistical population of this research consists of the citizens of Urmia City, with a population of 1,040,565 people. To determine the sample size, the standard Cochran formula with an error level of 5 percent was used, based on which 383 people were obtained as the final sample size. This method, which is known as a valid tool in research, ensures that the selected sample has the necessary ability to reflect the characteristics of the target population and that the results of the research can be generalized to the entire statistical population. A closed questionnaire with a Likert scale with 26 items is used to collect the required data. The validity of the questionnaire will be confirmed by several experts in the field of urban management and transportation, and its reliability will be measured by calculating the Cronbach's alpha coefficient using SPSS software. The quantitative data collected will be subjected to statistical analysis (including descriptive and inferential statistics) using SPSS software. Also, SEM structural equation analysis will be used with the help of Smart PLS software to test the research hypotheses and examine the relationships between variables.
Results and discussion
According to the results, the calculated t-values between all independent and dependent variables in the model are greater than 1.96 and are significant at the 95% level, so that the physical component has the highest rank and the economic component has the lowest rank in the safe city components. The test can also be applied to continuous data (distance or relative), but their ranking is also taken into account when calculating this data.
According to the results of the Friedman test of the ranking of the items of the economic component, since the significance level is equal to 0.000 and is reported to be smaller than the standard error level of 0.05, it can be inferred that the average acquired rank of each of the items of the economic component is statistically significantly different from each other. This means that the item "Paying attention to economic infrastructure can help improve the labor market in the region" received the highest ranking, while the item "Costs related to transportation management should be considered with special care in urban planning" received the lowest ranking among the items of the economic component.
Conclusion
Based on the findings of the present study, the evaluation of safe city components within the framework of urban transportation management policies in Urmia shows that all economic, physical, socio-cultural, and environmental components are in a favorable state. The average scores of these components are above average (3) and are statistically significant. In particular, the physical component with the highest average (3.697) and composite reliability (0.937) was identified as the most influential dimension, while the economic component with an average of 3.381 was assigned the lowest rank among the components. These results indicate that transportation management policies in Urmia, especially in the area of physical and environmental infrastructure, have been able to help improve urban safety. The findings of this study are consistent with the results of domestic and foreign studies.