Measuring the quality of public transportation systems and ranking the bus transit routes using multi-criteria decision making techniques

This paper aims to provide a useful and practical methodology for bus transit operators to monitor and improve the quality of bus transit services. To this aim, a two-stage multi-criteria decision making approach is proposed. The first stage involves the use of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine the priority of each service quality attribute from the passengers' point of view. The second stage adopts Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to measure the service quality and rank the bus transit routes. The proposed approach provides a comprehensive performance analysis by incorporating user preferences and multiple criteria into the evaluation. Analysis identifies the most important service quality attributes from the users' perspectives. Furthermore, it distinguishes between high and low quality transit routes and gives an opportunity to monitor and improve the quality of bus transit service.