Metro Route Site Selection in Gaza City Using GIS and Spatial Multi Criteria Evaluation

This study involves the evaluation of a case study in Gaza City to select the Metro site route. Fifty major intersections in Gaza City are chosen as candidate sites for Metro-rail stations, with 500m buffer of each intersection. The criteria that used to choose the best stations of Metro lines are population density, vital places, available parking, area of intersection, traffic important of intersection, and land use. The control boundary criteria that used to choose the routes are soil type and ground water wells level. By using spatial multi criteria decision analysis and GIS, three routes are resulted. Two Metro lines have been chosen based on soil type, and level of ground water wells boundaries. The length of Line One equals 4.283 km and passes through six stations while length of Line Two equals 6.907 km and passes through eight stations. The Metro mode can be extended to reach new places that will be important and densely populated in the future. It is recommended to extend the Metro network to include other areas in Gaza Strip by connecting the Metro network of the City with northern and southern governorates to solve traffic congestions in the future.