Abstract
Recently, there has been a transparent need to involve public in transport development decisions not only in the EU but also in other countries worldwide. Public involvement in decision-making, however, suffers from two critical issues: lack of expertise and lack of enthusiasm. This paper aims to overcome the first problem: how to amend passenger preferences related to public transport development with expert knowledge on transport systems. For this purpose, a new research methodology has been created which combines the well proven Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) methods in a novel way. ISM is used to reveal the non-hierarchical connections of the transport system elements and by this, AHP results are modified with the consideration of element interactions. The first stage of the three-stage-survey has been conducted in Yurihonjo (Japan), the second and third in an international workshop with the participation of experts. Results show that the original AHP scores – gained from passenger evaluations – are significantly modified by adding expert knowledge on factor interactions, thus new preference order is gained related to the importance of the development of public transport system elements. The introduced procedure can be applied for other public transport system improvement decision-making situations in which passenger involvement is required.
Highlights
The recent decades have shown the growing importance of public engagement in transportation decision-making
The results showed stability, increasing the score of “Tractability” caused rank reversal between “Info during” and “Approachability” factors, so sensitivity could be detected in this part of the hierarchy
The numerical values of the hierarchical linkages were not altered, because both their existence and strength were determined in the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) phase
Summary
The recent decades have shown the growing importance of public engagement in transportation decision-making. Burall and Shahrokh (2010) present nine recommendations on how to engage the public in these decision making processes; among others declaring that “government must take final responsibility for making fair and balanced policy decisions that are informed by dialogue with the public”. Public transportation users have little time or enthusiasm for filling out long questionnaires and do not have the expertise that is necessary for complex and consistent evaluations of the system’s elements. These elements interact in various ways that make the overall decision very complicated.
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