Applying AHP technique to the assessment of railway trip quality (RTQ)

Abstract

The attractiveness and popularity of passenger transportation by railway largely depend on its quality. To attract more passengers to this means of transport, the parameters of passenger transportation by railway, having the strongest effect on this process, should be improved. The significance of these parameters (criteria) is determined in the paper by applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), suggested by T. Saaty. This method, based on pairwise comparison of criteria, allows us to determine normalized weights of particular criteria in their relation to other criteria of the set (A, B, C, D) analyses. The ranks of the criteria, elicited from the passengers of the train (belonging to the category K), service staff of the train (the category P) and the administration staff (the category A) are calculated. The estimates of the significance of the criteria, obtained from the respondents of the categories K, P and A and experts, are compared by calculating the differences in the criteria ranks. The conclusions are provided and the recommendations are given, which could help to improve the quality of passenger transportation by railway.