Abstract
Abstract
Smart transportation has become a fundamental component of sustainable urban development and smart city initiatives. Although previous studies have investigated intelligent transportation technologies and digital mobility solutions, limited attention has been given to identifying the underlying determinants that collectively characterize the readiness of cities for smart transportation development. This study addresses this gap by examining the major factors associated with smart transportation across a sample of 33 international cities representing different levels of economic development and transportation maturity. A dataset was compiled from multiple internationally recognized sources, including the World Bank Open Data, official transportation authorities, municipal reports, and the Happy City Index. Fifteen indicators describing transportation infrastructure, economic capacity, technological readiness, innovation, and institutional support were selected based on the existing literature. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with Varimax rotation was employed to identify the latent dimensions underlying these indicators and to construct factor scores for ranking the selected cities. PCA was conducted iteratively, with indicators exhibiting factor loadings below 0.50 being excluded when they did not contribute sufficiently to the retained component structure. The final PCA solution was evaluated using the KMO measure, Bartlett’s test of sphericity, communalities, eigenvalues, and Varimax-rotated component loadings. The analysis reveals that smart transportation development is primarily associated with five interrelated dimensions: smart mobility infrastructure, transport capacity, economic capacity, innovation and technological readiness, and institutional support. Cities exhibiting strong performance across these dimensions consistently achieve higher smart transportation readiness scores, whereas cities with weaker infrastructure and limited technological investment demonstrate lower readiness levels. The findings further indicate that investment in research and development, integrated smart mobility infrastructure, reliable energy access, and sustained transportation investment constitute the most influential determinants of smart transportation development. The proposed framework provides a transparent and reproducible methodology for evaluating smart transportation readiness and offers practical guidance for policymakers seeking to prioritize infrastructure investment and accelerate the transition toward sustainable and intelligent urban mobility.