Locating urban transit hubs: Multicriteria model and case study in China

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive model for ranking candidate location plans of multiple urban transit hubs, which can effectively capture various aspects of concerns in the transit hub location planning process, including the overall efficiency of the transit network, the transfer intensity, the proximity to major passenger generators/attractors, the effectiveness of hub service coverage, the compatibility with land use restrictions, and the adaptability to future developable transit concepts. Grounded on an analytical hierarchy process (AHP)-based framework integrated with fuzzy logic, the proposed model offers the strengths to effectively determine the weights for multiple evaluation criteria and to synthesize the final score of each candidate plan for comparison. Results from a case study in Suzhou Industrial Park, China, reveal that the proposed model offers some promising properties for transportation planners to use in planning of transit hub locations. Comparative studies with respect to different evaluation criteria have further demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed model in capturing the impacts of different criteria on the decision-making process. © 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.