Integrated and Sustainable Benchmarking of Metro Rail System Using Analytic Hierarchy Process and Fuzzy Logic: A Case Study of Mumbai

Intra-city mobility affects the well-being of city dwellers and the quality of urban life. A highly sophisticated and sustainable mass rapid transit system is key to facilitating such mobility. Metro Rail is one such successful system suitable for Indian conditions. A network of around 425 km is under operation and about 700 km is under fast track implementation in various cities (MoHUA in Annual report 2017–2018, Government of India, 2018). On the other hand, Metro Rail is an expensive form of urban transport, so any non-viability can leave the public transit agencies and the government in huge debt towards repaying the loans with which the system has been funded. In this context, achieving viability and long-term sustainability becomes mandatory for metro systems; such viability can be achieved by thorough performance assessment and benchmarking of the system in conventional and sustainable dimensions. Though institutionalization of benchmarking is practiced globally, few such efforts have been attempted in India. This study attempts to develop a mode-specific benchmarking framework for metro systems, structuring nine performance indicators (criteria) and 34 evaluators (sub-criteria) with a case study of Mumbai. Multi-criteria decision making techniques such as the analytic hierarchy process and direct weighting are engaged to incorporate a priority-based weighting system into the benchmarking framework. As the performance is benchmarked against set targets (absolute benchmarking), vagueness associated with the scaling/ranking is addressed through the fuzzy logic approach. Finally, the rate of performance of the Mumbai Metro Rail system is determined as 75% with acceptable results in the service, quality and societal sectors, though much improvement is needed in the sector of multimodal integration.