An Integrated Approach of the AHP and Spherical Fuzzy Sets for Analyzing a Park-and-Ride Facility Location Problem Example by Heterogeneous Experts

Consensus is difficult to acquire among a group of transportation specialists with diverse areas of expertise over the most relevant set of criteria considering a transport related problem. For example, when establishing a Park-and-Ride (P&R) system, if an expert favors the public transport criterion, and another focuses on the economic area, the problem is considerably difficult to solve. Therefore, this research provides a methodological solution including the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Spherical Fuzzy Sets (SFSs) with the purpose of addressing both sorts of difficulties concurrently, i.e., taking hesitant scores into account and synthesizing stakeholders’ viewpoints through a mathematical procedure. SFSs are preferable compared to other solutions due to their flexible specification of the belonging function. In current study, the spherical AHP method is applied to a P&R system location problem to evaluate the results of the participating transportation experts from diverse backgrounds. Additionally, similarities and differences between the obtained results and the fuzzy AHP calculation are emphasized. Based on the results public transport accessibility is the most important criterion when establishing a P&R system. However, when compared to the AHP Triangular Fuzzy Sets multi-criteria technique, the sub-criteria vary significantly. The results give urban transport planners a clear guideline that the implementation of the P&R system should run in parallel with the optimization of public transport.