An Integrated Decision Making Framework For Vehicle Selection in Shuttle Services: Case of A University Campus

One of the most significant activities of life is transportation. An efficient transportation network has many health benefits on a society, such as making work and essential services, recreation facilities, and shopping centers accessible by people and allowing people to contact each other. However, the continuous increase in demand for transportation and consequently the use of vehicles using conventional fuel types, such as fossil fuels, causes serious problems on the environment. Alternative energy sources such as electricity, natural gas, propane, ethanol, methanol, biodiesel and hydrogen, some of which are similar with the traditional fuels and some of which require completely different vehicle properties, are considered as alternatives to gasoline and diesel fuels. As of today since there is a wide variety of vehicle options, including hybrid and electric vehicles, for users the decision on the type of vehicle to be preferred is certainly a challenging task for the purchasers. During the decision-making process, all options should be carefully evaluated in terms of advantages and disadvantages, where Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) can be a helpful tool for decision-makers in this challenging process. In the present study, with the ultimate motivation of aiding the decision making process for renewing the shuttle bus fleet -that is currently composed of all internal combustion engine vehicles- serving to a university campus, we concentrate on the problem of selecting the most suitable vehicle for a medium-scale settlement's road network.