Urban bus network of priority lanes: A combined multi-objective, multi-criteria and group decision-making approach

This study presents a multi-objective approach for selecting an optimal network of public transport (PT) priority lanes. Bus priority schemes and techniques on urban roads and highways have proven effective for increasing reliability, efficiency, and faster travel times. This study develops a multi-objective model for selecting an optimal PT priority lanes network that 1) maximizes total travel time savings; 2) maintains balanced origin and destination terminals; and 3) minimizes the construction budget. In contrast to commonly used single objective models, which must be executed numerous times in order to provide the decision-maker with feasible solutions, multi-objective models exhibit a complete set of feasible and optimal solutions with a single execution. Since the major disadvantage of a multi-objective model is the need to select a preferred solution from a set, a multi-criteria approach was developed for: 1) ranking each decision-maker's solutions; and 2) selecting a compromise solution acceptable to a group of decision-makers. This methodology is demonstrated with a case study of Petah Tikva, a medium-sized city in Israel.