Establishing the Weights of Performance Criteria: Case Studies in Transportation Facility Management
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 135, Issue 9
Abstract
Transportation management policies and practices are currently experiencing evolving trends such as funding limitations, aging facilities, greater travel demand, increased number of visible stakeholders, and higher user expectations. As a result, transportation agencies currently grapple with how to best incorporate a wide range of performance criteria in investment evaluation and decision making. Often, a key prerequisite to multiple criteria decision making is to establish the relative importance of different performance criteria as perceived by decision makers, facility users, and other stakeholders. This paper reviews methods that exist in the literature for weighting and illustrates the applications of some of these methods. For the bridge management case study, the direct-questioning weighting technique was found to yield results that indicated high levels of agreement among bridge experts. For the overall highway asset management case study, the analytical hierarchy process was used to derive the weights across performance criteria. The findings show that the distribution of weights across various highway performance criteria based on the agency perspective can differ from that based on the road users’ perspective. The relative weights of the different performance criteria can help agencies establish the overall combined desirability or otherwise of each alternative transportation action in terms of all performance criteria, identify the best action in a balanced and rational manner, or analyze trade-offs between the alternative actions.
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Acknowledgments
The writers are grateful to Mr. Brian Nichols, Mr. John Weaver, and Mr. David Holtz of Indiana Department of Transportation (DOT) and all members of the JTRP SPR-2384 project panel for their support of the research project to which this work is related. Also, the valuable contributions of Mr. Arun Shirole of Arora Consultants, Mr. William Hyman of ARA Associates, and the entire project panel of NCHRP Project 12-67 are acknowledged. The contents of this paper reflect the views of the writers, who are responsible for the facts and the accuracy of the data presented herein. The contents do not necessarily reflect the official views or policies of Indiana DOT or NCHRP, nor do the contents constitute a standard, specification, or regulation.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 135 • Issue 9 • September 2009
Pages: 619 - 631
Copyright
© 2009 ASCE.
History
Received: Aug 12, 2008
Accepted: Feb 18, 2009
Published online: Mar 5, 2009
Published in print: Sep 2009
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