analysis of the transportation system sustainability and identification of itsspatial pattern in the villages of tabriz county

Purpose: rural transportation plays an essential role in achieving and realizing more than half of the sustainable development goals. for decades, transportation policy programs have sought to create sustainable transportation in rural areas.the successful implementation of sustainable transportation in these regions helps to achieve goals such as the reduction of poverty, ensuring food security, promoting and growing inclusive economic opportunities, empowering women, providing employment, and eliminating restrictions on access to services in rural areas. this research attemptsto evaluate and rank the level of sustainability of the transportation system in the villages of tabriz county.methods: this research is applied in terms of purpose and, based on nature, it is descriptive-analytical.the necessary data for this research werecollected by documentaryand survey methods,drawing from the f 2011 and 2016 censuses of iran and a researcher-made questionnaire.the population of the research includes rural households in tabriz county. using cochran’s formula and with a 95% confidence interval, the sample size was determined to be  320 households, and a simple random sampling method was used for the selection of samples from villages.for data analysis, the multi-attribute utility theory (maut) ranking method was used, and moran’s i index was used to analyze spatial autocorrelation.results:the ranking obtained from the maut method indicates that bagh yaqoub village, located near tabriz city, has the highest level of transportation sustainability in terms of the considered indicators, and gowarvillage has the lowest level.the results of spatial autocorrelation analysisindicatethe existence of a clustered pattern in the spatial distributionof transportation sustainability. specifically, the villages with high transportation sustainability levels are more concentrated in certain parts of the studied area.conclusion:the research concludesthat the villages near tabriz city, the county’s center and well-connected by main roads, are more sustainable than the villages located farther away.