The Conceptual Framework of the Government-Sponsored Rural Road Improvement Project Evaluation and Selection

Abstract

To take advantage from locating in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) mainland region, the Thai government has established a policy of being logistics and transportation hub. The policy has, therefore, challenged the Department of Rural Roads (DRR) and particularly the Bureau of Rural Roads (BRR) 11, 12, and 14 undertaking responsibility for all rural roads in the south part of Thailand. The BRR strategic plan and implementation have been demanded to reform. This research aimed to create the conceptual framework of route project improvement execution plan for BRRs’ decision-making on project investment prioritization.  The focus group interview method was applied to gather factors influencing transportation investment projects in order to develop the criteria of route project improvement prioritization. In addition, the score level of each criterion was also collected through this method. Then, to rank the important criteria, the questionnaire was developed to gain the data of pairwise comparison and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method was applied to analyze the data. The results showed that the framework was suitable for the BRRs’ long-term route project improvement execution plan while the instant application was appropriated for the BRRs’ short-term plan.