Modeling the Impact of Interaction Factors for Transport System Elements on Quality of Life Using Multi-Criteria Decision-Making and Applied Statistical Methods

This paper presents an improved model of the interaction among transport system elements, which identifies six levels of interaction and their analysis. A framework of eight factors (criteria) and their interactions that improve the quality of life is developed. The Analytic Hierarchy Process, Average Rank Transformation into Weight, and rank correlation methods were used to calculate the normalized weights and compatibility indicators of the 54 expert criteria. The results show that the most significant improvements in quality of life are the development of transport infrastructure and its quality, the reduction of road traffic accidents, and the reduction of environmental pollution caused by the transport sector, all of which directly contribute to a sustainable urbanized society. The improvement in quality of life is least affected by the increase in the number of vehicles and their technical parameters, as well as by the increase in the share of the country’s Gross Domestic Product generated in the transport sector. The variance of the weights of the criteria was shown to depend on the different magnitudes of the fundamental scale of the pairwise comparison chosen by the experts, the variance (stability) of the experts’ personal opinions, and the net variance of the weights assigned to the criteria by the expert team. The results of this study can be used to develop a national or regional transport sector development strategy that takes into account the factors that have the greatest impact on quality of life.