Engineering urban mobility through a strategic framework for tram route design

This study aims to determine the most suitable tram route among three alternative alignments in Aksaray city by employing an integrated multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). The study further examines the consistency and robustness of the selected route through sensitivity analysis. The research methodology integrates AHP and TOPSIS to evaluate alternatives using six decision criteria: population density, route length, estimated construction cost, accessibility to important urban functions, traffic congestion level, and number of road intersections. Criteria weights were derived from expert judgments via pairwise comparisons (AHP), and the final ranking of routes was obtained using TOPSIS. A sensitivity analysis was conducted by altering weight configurations to assess the stability of the ranking. Results indicated that Route II achieved the highest closeness to the ideal solution in the base scenario (D₂ = 0.598), followed by Route I (D₁ = 0.519) and Route III (D₂ = 0.400). However, sensitivity analysis across seven alternative weighting configurations revealed that Route I ranked first in five scenarios, Route II in one, and Route III in one. Particularly, under congestion-dominant weighting, Route I reached D₁ = 0.897, while Route II dropped to D₂ = 0.147. These findings highlight a competitive balance between the first two alternatives and demonstrate the decisive influence of population served, congestion level, and cost criteria on the route selection outcomes. The integrated approach provides a replicable decision-making framework for urban rail planning under limited spatial and economic resources. The findings highlight the need to account for both technical and spatial constraints while designing cost-efficient and demand-sensitive tram systems. The novelty of this study lies in embedding spatial indicators into a hybrid AHP-TOPSIS framework and validating results through a structured sensitivity analysis in the context of a mid-sized Anatolian city. This study contributes to the growing literature on hybrid MCDM methods in transportation planning by incorporating spatial performance indicators and validating results through scenario-based sensitivity analysis. It also presents a practical case from a mid-sized Anatolian city where such methodologies are underutilized.