A Framework to Assess the Sustainability of Transportation Systems based on Analytic Hierarchy Process

摘要

It is agreed that a sustainable transportation system has to satisfy today's needs with a positive influence on meeting future transportation demand. The major concerns for most transportation agencies are related to (a) the safety issues for all users, (b) the system’s efficiency in providing accessibility and mobility, © the potential of the transportation systems to enhance economic productivity and social justice, and (d) limiting the negative impact on the natural environment. In this study, the criterions related to these major concerns, generally referred to as indicators, are grouped into sets or categories that include specific goals and objectives. It is proposed that an ideal sustainable transportation planning requires a balanced set of indicators targeting economic, social, and environmental objectives. Therefore, the assessment of a system’s sustainability depends on the selection of appropriate indicators in each category. Using these indicators sets this study proposes the development of a Sustainability Index, which is a global performance measure that can account for the effect of different sustainability indicators on a given transportation system, regardless of its size. This global performance measure represents an aggregated value that weights-in a selected set of sustainability indicators, and it is developed based on Analytic Hierarchy Processes. The proposed methodology provides a global assessment index based on a given set of indicators and their relative importance to each other. This methodology is organized as a comprehensive and flexible evaluation framework that is adaptable to local assessment conditions used by transportation agencies to examine the conditions of the existing transportation infrastructure, as well as to predict the sustainability of future transportation developments.