01473728

Component

Traffic congestion, delay, accident, air and sound pollution are main downsides of living in metropolitans these days. Cities managers are trying to improve life standards in these cities while an important aspect is to reduce traffic and corresponding problems. In this research, expert knowledge is used to identify and organize effective criteria and rank policies for mitigating traffic problems in an overpopulated city. Tehran, the capital of Iran, the biggest city in the Middle East and the 16th dense city in the world is a good example which is studied in this research. To model the policy making problem, significant elements are identified and their weights are calculated and used to prioritize the candidate policies, i.e. bus network improvement, development of subway network, development of road infrastructures and development of bicycle network, using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) based on the knowledge and judgment of a group of experts. Important criteria are classified into clusters of benefits, costs and opportunities in which totally 22 elements form the knowledge tree. Results show that user cost, congestion reduction, fuel consumption and safety approximately form 50 percent of total weight among all studied elements. According to the research conclusion, development of subway networks is the most efficient policy to reduce traffic problems in an overpopulated city as it increases benefits, reduces costs and improves traffic and transport opportunities. Sensitivity analysis shows that development of subway network always remains the superior policy for all relative importance values assigned to benefit, cost and opportunity criteria.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABJ80 Statistical Methods.

01470560

13-4610

English

19p

2013

Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Analytic hierarchy process; Costs; Decision making; Fuel consumption; Metropolitan areas; Policy making; Safety; Sensitivity analysis; Subways; Traffic congestion; Transportation policy

User costs

Tehran (Iran)

Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Policy; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2013 Paper #13-4610

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Feb 5 2013 12:53PM