Evaluation of urban public transport priority performance based on the improved TOPSIS method: A case study of Wuhan

Abstract

By comprehensively considering four subsystems (overall development level, infrastructure construction, public transportation service level and policy support), this study establishes an index system to evaluate public transport priority performance. The performance of a public transport priority implementation in the city of Wuhan from 2006 to 2015 was evaluated by applying the structural entropy-TOPSIS model. The evaluation results showed the following: The comprehensive performance of Wuhan’s public transport priority improved from poor to medium, then to good and finally, to excellent. The performance level of the four subsystems showed a trend of increasing year by year. In the future, the performance metrics for infrastructure construction, public transport service level and policy support still have significant room for improvement. While improving the overall performance of public transport, Wuhan should also pay attention to the harmonious development of subsystems and focus on improving public transport priority infrastructure construction, expanding public service levels and providing policy support. The research ideas and methods in this paper provide a realistic basis for improving the performance of urban public transport priority. The further research areas will focus on diagnosing obstacle factors affecting the performance of urban public transport priority.