Fuzzy evaluation of potential suburban railway station locations

A multicriterion evaluation methodology is presented and its applicability demonstrated in the context of identifying the most suitable railway station locations within a set of potential station locations on one of three possible railway line extensions to Brisbane’s suburban network. These possible extensions involve the reopening of the Bethania-Beaudesert line for passenger services; the adaptation of the standard gauge Sydney line for extension of passenger services to Greenbank and beyond; and, the development of a spur-line to Inala and immediate surrounds. The Sydney line is the focus of this paper. The methodology is particularly relevant in the context of options characterized by ‘soft’ data where only linguistic descriptions of the performance of options with respect to criteria are possible. Linguistic variables such as ‘performance’ assuming linguistic values such as ‘high’, ‘medium’ and ‘low’ are characterized in terms of fuzzy variables, in particular, triangular fuzzy numbers in this study.