A Methodology to identify an Optimum Rail Network for Colombo Metropolitan Region

The location of rail stations and route structure for new railways in a country or a region constitutes complicated planning processes which involve the consideration and analysis of various data sets and other relevant information. It includes the evaluation of socio-economic and technical parameters to minimize the cost and environmental impacts of different alternatives and to achieve the development of alternative stations and corridors for the rail networks. The use of modern tools such as Geographic Information System (GIS) to identify suitable locations of rail stations and selection of optimum routes involves managing a variety of data sets from different sources at different scales. This work is intended to investigate and show the capabilities of GIS in planning rail network considering the proposed Colombo Metropolitan Region (CMR) Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system as a case study. The study will identify the information needed for planning and the evaluation criteria for locating stations and optimum network using spatial multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) processes with the help of GIS. The network data model provides an open, generic data model with many common GIS analysis capabilities which dealt with rail network analysis.