Railway station site selection using analytical hierarchy process and data envelopment analysis

This paper deals with the problem of finding the optimum site for a railway station for the city of Mashhad, northeast Iran, using the methods of analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and data envelopment analysis (DEA). The paper identifies a four-level hierarchy model for the railway station site-selection problem. The model uses four main criteria: (1) rail-related, (2) passenger services, (3) architecture and urbanism, and (4) economics. In addition, there are 26 subcriteria as well as five (potential) candidates or alternatives. Comparison matrices are used to obtain the local weights and priorities of the railway-station candidates. A DEA model is proposed to determine the optimum site for a railway station. It is shown that the local priorities (or weights) obtained from the AHP can be defined as the multiple outputs of a DEA model for finding the best site for a railway station.