Integrated Assessment for Mobility Management: An Application of AHP Multicritera Method for the Traffic Urban Plan of Battipaglia (Italy)

In this paper a new method to apply the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is proposed. It aims at being a useful tool to evaluate short term operative or tactical plans for urban areas. As a matter of fact, evaluation does not concern the results of planning which are generally considered in the control phase, starting after the implementation of planning options. We start from the hypothesis that any urban traffic management plan is composed under the supervision of the public authority; therefore, it cannot be such different from the commitment general desires. On one side, the proposed method would evaluate the completeness of a urban mobility management plan; on the other side it helps public authorities to understand how a plan matches the objectives of the commitment with respect to the “non-intervention scenario” using a first set of indicators. Since AHP is based on pairwise comparison of alternatives and only one urban mobility management plan is often presented, we developed the present case-study aiming at comparing a proposed plan alternative to an ideal one, drawn according to the Italian law provisions. Using such a procedure, the final score takes into account both the improvements, with respect to non intervention scenario, and the completeness of the plan. The methodology adopted is very “elastic” in its use and could be developed to similar evaluations, also for strategic plans.