Ranking of Public Bus Alternatives using Hybrid Multi-Criteria Decision Making Approach under Fuzzy Environment: A Case Study of Kathmandu

Abstract

User satisfaction is an intrinsic aspect of any service and since public transport is a service based supply, it has to be continuously assessed for user satisfaction. This paper aims at depicting the results of the hybrid approach based on user satisfaction and multi criteria decision making, applied for the ranking of the public bus alternatives in Kathmandu. The implemented approach expounded vividly in the methodology is abode of three stages, explicitly, collection of data pertaining to user satisfaction under each established criteria, determination of relative weights of criteria used to evaluate the alternatives on the basis of judgements from the experts and finally the integration of user satisfaction with expert opinion to rank the alternatives. Fuzzy environment endows a comfortable opportunity to the users and the experts to provide pertinent ratings in qualitative terms like high, very high or low rather than ratings in discrete numbers.