A multiobjective programming approach for selecting non-independent transportation investment alternatives

This article presents a new method for SElecting Non-independent TRansportation investment Alternatives (SENTRA). This method utilizes effective distance heuristic algorithm which attempts to maximize the achieved objectives needed to satisfy available resources. Since transportation investment planning cannot avoid dealing with issues of interdependence among alternatives, this paper will consider four types of investment alternatives: independence, complementarity, substitution and common complementary substitution. Transportation investment alternative selection problem can be formulated in terms of the 0-1 multiobjective multidimensional knapsack problem. Possessing the characteristics of NP-completeness, strict computation is not necessary for the optimal solution, but simple computation for near-optimal solution is expected. The method is proposed in this paper so as to attain the near-optimal solution, which, aside from ranking the selected transportation investment alternatives, can easily perform sensitivity analysis. Finally, an example is presented to illustrate the method.