Sustainability in the evaluation of bus rapid transportation projects considering both managers and passengers perspectives: A triple-level efficiency evaluation approach

The significant positive and negatives effects of transportation systems (TSs) on the sustainability of cities and human life draw much attention from both researchers and managers. Constructing bus rapid transit (BRT) networks, or adding new lines to the existing ones, is one of the cheapest and easiest solutions to improve the performance of the urban transportation network (UTN). Often, large number of candidate projects (BRT lines) renders the execution of all these projects impossible due to technical and financial limitations. Hence, evaluating the candidate projects and developing the best plan for constructing a BRT network is an important issue requiring a complex decision-making process. In this study, a multi-period triple-level sustainable BRT network design model has been proposed using data envelopment analysis, game theory, Malmquist Index (MI) and considering all sustainability dimensions including environment, economic and society. Both managers’ and passengers’ perspectives have been considered in the modeling. A procedure based on a genetic algorithm (GA) has been developed to solve the presented triple-level model. Finally, the model has been applied to a real-world case study of evaluating and selecting the BRT projects in the city of Isfahan, and the results have been analyzed.