Analysis of the Role of E-Service Offices in Reducing Urban Journeys (Case Study: District 5, Tehran City)

Introduction
Today, information and communication technology as a pervasive force has affected various aspects of the human life. One of the main effects of the new technology was design and deployment of e-government. Both structurally and in terms of nature, e-government is a modern phenomenon that has been established on the basis of mutual interactions between government and citizens.
Given economic restructuring and reducing the government role in providing a free service to the citizens, in one hand, increase in the cost of urban life and the diversity of needs, on the other hand, will make the need to find a fast, low-cost, direct and indirect solution to reduce costly urban trips. With the development of cities and metropolitan areas and population density, urban travel demand takes a broader scale. The reason of high travel demand is additional traffic to benefit from various urban services. Hence, in Tehran, in District 5, with irregular migration, low rates of urban land caused population density in the area. The district has very limited physical growth and changes in internal body of the regions and localities are the only way to attract the population.
Therefore, the need for appropriate and accessible services and information to citizens without wasting unnecessary time and costs due to urban traffic cannot be met except the use of ICT tools.
Hence, the purpose of this research is to examine the role of e-service offices formation in reduction of trips and to increase positive effects in urban management. Accordingly, the research question is:
What is the impact of e-service offices in reducing urban journeys as well as providing the easier and faster service in the study area?
Methodology
This study is conducted through descriptive and analytical methods, in the descriptive section, documental methods as well as field work were used and required data were collected using questionnaire. In the analytical section, the target population, the citizens of District 5 of Tehran and electronic service offices were determined. Then, the sample size was determined based on Cochran and extracted data were analyzed by statistical techniques. 
 
Results and discussion
Descriptive results represent that most widely used vehicle type to access E-government services offices by clients was personal vehicle (more than 56 percent of respondents). Use of bus and subway had the lowest portion for access to E-government services offices.
The question referred to the distance from home and workplace to electronic service offices shows that more than 30 percent of homes and 43 percent of workplaces have a distance more than 1000 meter to E-government service offices. Also from 8 AM to 10 AM in the morning was preferred time for most of the residents to go to E-government services offices. Most of the people were partly familiar with electronic services but they were not learnt about electronic services web sites.
The first step of analytical method is to answer the first question, “What is the impact of e-service offices in reducing urban journeys in the study area?”Single-sample T test was used. The results show that the T-statistic is equal to 3.82, which is significant at 95% confidence interval.
Therefore, it can be said that e-government services was able to reduce urban traffic. Pearson results show that there was a significant negative relationship between the use of e-government services and urban traffic in 99% confidence level (p <0.01). This means that through development of e-government services, the urban traffic can significantly be reduced. Therefore, significant and negative relationship between these two variables was observed by 99% confidence level.
To investigate the second research question, “What is the impact of e-service offices in provision of the easier and faster servicing in the study area?” also single-sample t-test has been used. The results show that except for information level item from electronic office in average terms, electronic services have been effective on other items. Thus, more attention should be paid to informing people. Results show that the overall impact of e-government services is positive and significant. Given that the value of T is equal to 17.89, we can say that e-government is "helpful" in solving problems and make the service better and easier.
 
Conclusion 
Urban spaces providing better services to citizens are established to improve the quality of life of people. It can have lasting effects on access to timely information and statistics, improving the efficiency and performance of government agencies, reducing the time waste and expense of citizens, reducing trips within the city, reducing urban traffic, and reducing air pollution and noise pollution, easy access to services, government downsizing and privatization, increasing the number and quality of services and providing services to citizens everywhere and every time. The establishment of integrated systems in the cities prevents the parallel activities, chaos and disorder, and all activities are supervised by the integrated urban space management.
The correct use of ICT and city tools in the formation of e-government in cities is the most reasonable and effective way to accomplish this goal. Thus, with this approach, results from this study have indicated that the t value of 3.82 with a confidence level of 95% shows the effective functions of  e-government services in reducing traffics. Also, the t-value equal to 17.89 shows the share of government in solving problems and providing better urban services. Thus, reducing trips within the city and the development of electronic civil services as a key goal of e-government is approved. Based on the results, weaknesses of factors such as poor information, lack of completely electronic affairs and need to follow and obtain information in person and lack of proper access to provided services, failure to provide the required information can eliminate the positive effects of e-government in reducing urban trips.