Analyzing university students’ mode choice preferences by using a hybrid AHP group-PROMETHEE model: evidence from Budapest city

Over the last decades, the analysis of mode choice preferences has become a vital aspect of enhancing the quality of public transport services. Most papers aim to derive conclusions from large-scale surveys. However, for specific homogenous patterns, such as university students, a smaller group of evaluators might also be sufficient. Such a survey can rather be considered as an expert survey, in which few representatives might express the preference of a larger community, thus, a different methodology can be more effective than the traditional statistical techniques. This paper aims to introduce a new approach that combines two multi-criteria decision-making methods, the analytic hierarchy process and the preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluation, for a hybrid consensual model by aggregating the individual priorities defined by each decision-maker. The introduced model presents advantages in terms of reducing time, cost, and effort compared to statistical methods and requires solely necessary information from the users via objective and subjective evaluations. The model’s effectiveness is tested with real-world data from the city of Budapest; highlighting the significant impact of the underground mode on users’ behavior toward public transport. In addition, the outcomes are compared to other existing results of student preference surveys.