Multicriteria evaluation as a tool for decision support in the design of sustainable routes

Abstract

Public transport negative externalities have been increasing over the past years and, consequently, a bigger concern for eliminating and minimizing them has been growing. One way to contribute for this global objective is to design public transport networks towards sustainability, which requires an assessment of its sustainability performance. Thus, the main goal of this dissertation is to develop a tool able to accomplish a multi-objective evaluation of public transport routes regarding the three main sustainability domains - economic, social, and environmental. The considered structure is based on a hierarchical relation between domains, themes, and indicators. Accordingly, for each domain, a selection of indicators within different chosen themes was performed. The quantification of each indicator was estimated prior to the assignment of their themes and domains' importance. This assignment was mainly based on the literature, and given the different sources and opinions, sensibility analyses were performed. The tool was applied to a simulation case constituted by three routes, based on STCP's network data that provides a public transport service in Porto's metropolitan area.