Specification of basic operational/technical performances of new railway vehicle for suburban/urban transport

The new vehicles for suburban/urban transport, planned to be introduced on the network of electrified lines of Yugoslavia in the near future, should be maximally adapted to operational conditions they will operate in. For this reason a complex project was prepared, the purpose of which was the specification of these performances. The paper will present the results of this investigation which included 11 towns of Yugoslavia. The basic strategy of investigations was that vehicle performances can be defined only as a set of systematically investigated construction elements of the network of railway lines on which these vehicles are to operate, the established volume and characteristics of passenger flows, technology and organization of suburban/urban transport, new acquired knowledge, priciples and solutions in building new similar vehicles in the most developed countries and economic abilities of towns where such vehicles are to be used. By further investigatons a method of multi-criterion evaluation known as the outranking methods can be applied in specifying the desired performances.