A systematic approach to evaluate risks and failures of public transport systems with a real case study for bus rapid system in Istanbul

Abstract

Maintenance planning and risk evaluation of public transport systems (PTS) is completely critical and important for the natural structure and ecological balance of the city and its' environment. It is noteworthy to take the correct actions and decisions for the process to make a significant contribution towards the development and ecological sustainability of the city. We also know that failures occurring in PTS leads to personal and social damages such as hazards for passenger life and financial loss that occurs as a result of damage to vehicles due to these failures. Therefore, it is essential to analyze failures of PTS and to improve maintenance planning for obtain a reliable transport system. For this aim, a systematic approach based on maintenance decision support system has been suggested to eliminate the risks arising from failures for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system in this paper. The suggested system aims to minimize the harmful effects of these risks with respect to individuals, society and environment perspectives. The proposed integrated systematic approach consists of fuzzy rule based system (FRBS), fuzzy multi criteria decision making (MCDM), stochastic MCDM, mathematical modelling, information theory and heuristic approaches. The mathematical modeling has been applied to evaluate membership functions (MFs) of FRBS and a heuristic approach named particle swarm optimization (PSO) has been also used to solve the problem. Additionally, MCDM methods are also used to prioritize the failures and to determine weights of them. The suggested systematic approach has been applied on a real case study for BRT system in Istanbul and some actions that includes more details and information about risks and failures have been suggested to obtain a more effective maintenance plan. The validity analysis also confirmed the obtained results of the suggested systematic approach.