Prioritization of railway infrastructure projects using the ANP approach – Case Study Serbian Railway Network

Abstract

One of the strategic goals of each country is the transport infrastructure development. The realization of transport infrastructure projects provides faster economic and social development of the country and the region as well. Considering the railway sector, at the beginning, it is necessary to prepare project’s documentation that depends on the selected level of the railway infrastructure development. The types of the railway infrastructure improvement in the Republic of Serbia are defined as follows: renewal or rehabilitation, reconstruction, modernization and construction of railway lines. The time of completion of the works related to certain type of improvement varies according to scope and type of works, the terrains on which railway line is located, the liquidity of the country, as well as the willingness of international financial institutions to provide loans. Considering the limited availability of loan resources and the inability of the country to provide greater guarantees, further prioritization of railway infrastructure projects is necessary. In the process of prioritization it’s essential to consider economic and financial indicators, that define the feasibility of the project, but also other relevant technological indicators. In this paper, the proposed method for ranking railway infrastructure projects is the multi-criteria approach – Analytic Network Process, ANP. The developed model is tested on the data related to the railway infrastructure projects in the Republic of Serbia.