The Selection of Railway System Projects with Multi Creteria Decision Making Methods: A Case Study for Istanbul

Abstract

Railway systems are preferred to solve traffic problems and are becoming backbones of transportation in cities especially in metropoles where transportation demands are high. At the point of enabling railway system investments which need big money source, decision taking at evaluation process especially for developing countries, is taking big import. In the literature, Net Present Value Analysis (NPVA), Benefit Cost Analysis (BCA) and Internal Efficiency Analysis (IEA) methods, which only take into account the numerical values, are used in the evaluation of transportation investments. Apart from these methods, another method used in this field is Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM). This method is not just evaluating economic sides of investments like previous methods, it is also making possible evaluating both verbal and economic values together by handling environment compatibility, relevance to historic tissue, integration with current transportation nets and using fields. In this study, prioritization will be made among alternative rail system projects planned to be used in Istanbul by utilizing the proposed MCDM methods to be used in the evaluation of transportation investments. For this purpose, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) projects, which are planned to be constructed throughout Istanbul, are considered as an alternative. As a result of the comprehensive literature study, the criteria were identified by determining the criteria used in the evaluation of transportation investments in the world and then by the experts who decided which of these criteria would be appropriate for Istanbul. At this stage, the most preferred Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) for transportation investment evaluation problems was used and alternative weights were found by using the Best Worst Method (BWM) which had not been used before in this kind of problem solving, and the comparison of two methods was made. As a result of the analysis, the findings were evaluated and several recommendations were made to determine the most appropriate project among the ones to be planned. © 2019 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.