MULTIPLE CRITERIA EVALUATION OF TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM IMPROVEMENT PROJECTS: THE CASE OF KOREA

As a newly industrialized country, Korea has shown remarkable economic progress in the last three decades. This phenomenal growth has rapidly increased demands for a better quality of life. This includes, among others, increasing demand for high quality transportation system services. In this paper, the method of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is utilized to evaluate rural highway improvement projects in Korea. The appropriate rural highway improvement projects for widening and paving were selected and studied on the basis of some selection criteria. The results have shown that there are some significant differences in prioritizing projects using the traditional economic evaluation methods as compared to those resulting from the use of AHP. As demonstrated, the AHP proves to be an effective tool in evaluating transportation system projects.