Classifying Indian Railway Passenger Stations Using a Multi-criteria Framework

Indian Railways has one of the most extensive rail systems in the world which covers 68,000 km of rail track, and 7318 stations with over 23 million passengers daily. This public transport system is one of the cheapest modes of travel for millions of Indians daily. Railways play a vital role in transportation from origin to destination. A methodology for classifying railway passenger stations was developed in this study. The classification is done in four buckets: the position of the railway station within the network, the position of the Railway Station relative to Settlement (Attractiveness), Railway Station Infrastructure and Passenger Importance. This categorization aims to classify railway stations in the railway network according to accessibility, infrastructure and importance of the station on the network and the region. The research is based on an investigation of 7 parameters on 40 passenger railway stations of the Indian railway's northern division. Two techniques are evaluated for the classification which are general ranking rule and AHP (analytic hierarchy process) and then cluster analysis is conducted for categorization.