استفاده از فرآیند تحلیل سلسله مراتبی برای ارزیابی سیستم کرایه حمل و نقل

The transportation fare system influences the mobility of a region and the life quality of its inhabitants. This study aims to evaluate a region's optimal fare system by using the analytic hierarchy process, based on a survey among transportation experts, divided into three categories: operators, professors/consultants and government officials. The results are presented divided by category and overall, and the performance of the most important relative criteria to establish a fare system is determined. The most important criterion according to all the selected experts was the fare price, with 21.5%. The fare system determined as the best was distance/zone (31.1%) and the worst was a flat fare system (7.2%). In addition, we show the influence of the fare price criterion in each fare system through sensitivity charts and highlight its importance for all three groups of experts to evaluate the fare system.

According to the United Nations Populations Fund, in 2008 more than half the world's people – 3.3 billion – were living in urban areas. Nearly all projections are that the proportion of urban dwellers will continue to grow substantially in coming years. This places a great responsibility on governments to provide public services, such as water, sewerage, health, education and transportation. To ease problems of urban gridlock and air and noise pollution caused by the use of private cars, it is essential to have low-cost and good-quality mass transit systems. The provision of urban mobility to large numbers of users traveling different distances and routes at varying hours and frequencies is extremely complex and comes at a high cost to society (Morales, 2007). Therefore, the configuration of a transportation system and its scope are fundamental for city dwellers to have an adequate level of mobility. The transportation system is one of the main factors determining the pattern of urban development, particularly the degree of centralization and the location of areas providing services. A properly designed and fully integrated mass transit system can efficiently cover wide areas, permitting more people to use public transportation. Whether the system is totally operated by the government, by the private sector through a concession system, or a mix of the two, an efficient method of financing must be found. This entails public policy decisions on the proper combination of financing from taxes and fares, so that the costs are borne as equitably as possible by all people benefiting directly and indirectly from the system. The fare system influences peoples' commuting choices: public transportation (bus, subway, tram, etc.), private car, on foot or bicycle. When there is an integrated public transportation system (between modes and lines) that offers good service (in terms of waiting and travel time and information about the system) (Paulley et al., 2006), at affordable fares according to the average income of users and fare integration to facilitate payment, citizens will acquire the habit of using the system. It is also important to notice that the fare policy has a major role in the strategy of the public transportation integration (Bicalho & Vasconcellos, 2007). Clearly, cities that have a fare policy that avoids the payment each time someone use a public transport vehicle is contributing to increase the use of these vehicles (the same mode or not) and so contributing to an integrated operation. A good public system thus makes cities more livable and economically productive by reducing pollution, congestion and travel times. The fare system influences various aspects of a region's overall dynamic. Mobility, economic and social development and demographic density are the main factors affected by the fare system and that must be taken into account in formulating one. There is evidence that simplifying fare structures can do more than reduce the fares paid by most users and increase their number (Gilbert & Jalilian, 1991). Well-designed changes in the fare structure can also contribute to greater efficiency, accessibility and safety and reduced pollution (May, Kelly, & Shepherd, 2006). Because of the relevance of the subject and its direct connection with life quality, this study aims to contribute to the question of evaluating the best fare structure in an area. In Section 2 we review the literature of the Fare Policy which has included Fare Structure, Charging strategies and Payment options. In Section 3 we present an analysis of the fare system of some metropolitan regions in North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Oceania. The methodology using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to evaluate the best fare system in a region is presented in Section 4. The results are presented in Section 5. Finally, conclusions are drawn in Section 6.

The main objective of this article is to evaluate the best fare system to implement in an area, using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). To apply the AHP to this question, we conducted a survey among Brazilian transportation specialists, divided into three equal groups, drawn from transportation operators, academia and government. We sent an Excel questionnaire by email, containing pairwise matrices allowing them to present their relative judgments of the following criteria: complexity, impact on revenues, control of passengers, difficulty of implementation, long trips, forms of payment, fare price, cost of implementation and number of trips, and the respective sub-criteria: number of payment forms, information on the system, equipment used in each fare system, use of software, difficulty of integrating various operators, difficulty of integrating various regulators, extension of the network, number of long trips, population density around downtown, service offered for the fare and fare price. The general result was that fare price is the most important criterion, with 21.5%. The system determined as the most important was distance/zone (fare diversification) and the least important was a flat fare system. We should point out that many results presented here demonstrate a typical planning approach in developing countries, with populist actions based on short-term considerations taking precedence over technically based long-term solutions. A comprehensive modification of mobility in metropolitan regions, with the creation of various poles of development and employment, generating new mobility networks, would help alleviate the current problems of an overly centralized system subject to frequent operational failings. The planning of a fare system coherent with the characteristics of the region affected is crucial to provide greater mobility to the population and enhance regional development. Brazilian cities are marked by an absence or insufficient scope of tracked systems, and the bus systems are not well planned, besides charging high fares. These drawbacks force a great percentage of people to rely on more than one line and/or form of transportation, and to pay multiple fares in their daily commutes. One cause of this situation is the Brazilian constitution, which provides that authority to organize mass transit services rests with the municipalities. The fact that most large metropolitan regions take in several municipalities, often led by competing political interests, makes total integration of the network and fare system extremely difficult, even though this hinders the population's mobility and the development of the region as a whole. The results of coordinated efforts in the metropolitan areas (or megalopolises) of the other countries analyzed in this article, particularly those in Europe, Asia and North America (but sadly absent in South America), show what can be achieved with careful and rational planning.