Parking Site Selection for Light Rail Stations in Muaeng District, Khon Kaen, Thailand

Abstract

Khon Kaen District is in the central, north-east part of Thailand and is being developed to handle the country’s growth. Khon Kaen District is undertaking the project of building a light rail as a facility for the people. Consequently, one of the problems is ensuring adequate parking for people using the light rail service. In general, the symmetry concept naturally used in decision making to finding an optimal solution for decision and optimization problems. In this paper, multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) and multi-objective decision making (MODM) were used to solve the parking site selection problem, which made the decision easier. This paper proposed an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) technique, combined with the geographical information system (GIS), to evaluate the weight of the criteria used in the analysis and find potential parking solutions. Furthermore, this paper proposed the application of a linguistic technique with fuzzy TOPSIS methods to analyze the appropriateness of parking site selections from potential candidates to support use of the light rail. The results of the MCDA show that the most suitable parking lot location is along the light rail and closest to the business area. The results of the fuzzy TOPSIS method, both positive and negative ideal decisions, can help inform decision makers in selecting which candidate site is optimal for parking.