a b s t r a c t
Managing service quality is vital to retain customer satisfaction and augment revenues for any business
organization. Often it is difficult to assess service quality due to lack of quantifiable measures and limited
data. In this paper, we present a hybrid approach based on SERVQUAL and fuzzy TOPSIS for evaluating
service quality of urban transportation systems. The proposed approach consists of three steps. The first
step involves development of a SERVQUAL based questionnaire to collect data for measuring transportation
service quality. The participants provide linguistic assessments to rate the service quality criteria and
the alternatives. In step 2, the linguistic ratings are combined through fuzzy TOPSIS to generate an overall
performance score for each alternative. The alternative with the highest score is finally chosen. In step 3,
sensitivity analysis is conducted to evaluate the influence of criteria weights on the decision making process.
The strength of the proposed approach is its practical applicability and ability to provide solution under
partial or lack of quantitative information. An application of the proposed approach for evaluation of service
quality of metro in Montreal is provided.

a b s t r a c t
City logistics initiatives are steps taken by municipal administrations to ameliorate the
condition of goods transport in cities and reduce their negative impacts on city residents
and their environment. Examples of city logistics initiatives are urban distribution centers,
congestion pricing, delivery timing and access restrictions. In this paper, we present a
hybrid approach based on Affinity Diagram, AHP and fuzzy TOPSIS for evaluating city logistics
initiatives. Four initiatives namely vehicle sizing restrictions, congestion charging
schemes, urban distribution center and access timing restrictions are considered.
The proposed approach consists of four steps. The first step involves identification of criteria
for assessing performance of city logistics initiatives using Affinity Diagram. The
results are four categories of criteria namely technical, social, economical and environmental.
In step 2, a decision making committee comprising of representatives of city logistics
stakeholders is formed. These stakeholders are shippers, receivers, transport operators,
end consumers and public administrators. The committee members weight the selected
criteria using AHP. In step 3, the decision makers provide linguistic ratings to the alternatives
(city logistics initiatives) to assess their performance against the selected criteria.
These linguistic ratings are then aggregated using fuzzy TOPSIS to generate an overall performance
score for each alternative. The alternative with the highest score is finally chosen
as most suitable city logistics initiative for improving city sustainability. In the fourth step,
we perform sensitivity analysis to evaluate the influence of criteria weights on the selection
of the best alternative.
The proposed approach is novel and can be practically applied for selecting sustainable
city logistics initiatives for cities. Another advantage is its ability to generate solutions
under limited quantitative information. An empirical application of the proposed approach
is provided.