A Conceptual Methodology for Transportation Projects Selection

  Selection of appropriate infrastructure transportation projects such as highways, plays an important role in promotion of transportation systems. Usually in evaluation of transportation projects, because of lack of information or due to long time and high expenditures needed for gathering information, different effective factors are ignored. Thus, in this research, regarding multi criteria nature of transportation projects selection and using fuzzy logic, an appropriate conceptual framework for ranking and selecting transportation projects is proposed. Also, unlike the previous researches, we've applied a fuzzy inference system (FIS) to account value of each project with respect to each criterion, in the proposed methodology. The FIS helps us to set rule-based systems for paying attention to expert's experience and professional knowledge in decision making. The proposed methodology is explained in detail through an applicable example. We've considered most common criteria including effect of transportation project on traffic flow, economical growth and environment beside budget constraint, in the descriptive example.