Evaluation Methodology of the Railway Stations Using the AHP Method in the Transport Hubs from the Freight Transport Point of View

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The topic of the reviewed paper is an important and up-to-date one from the overall goal of promoting railway freight transportation.

The paper provides appropriate background information and references other studies on that topic. The research gap and the contribution of the paper are clearly stated.

The research methodology and proposed procedure was presented step by step making it easy to follow and replicate with the use of a different dataset (i.e. different rail transport system).

The results are described in great detail allowing to answer the stated research question and to verify the assumed hypothesis.

Naming 4th section Discussion is formally incorrect – as the proposed approach is novel there is no comparison of achieved results with other (previous) works. That section is more like the summary of the achieved results with added context for its importance and practical application – changing the name to more content-appropriate would be advisable.

The conclusions, contribution and further research directions are provided but the recommendations for potential interested shareholders should be elaborated more – as the practical application of the developed procedure may be of great interest to them.

The great strength of this paper/research is using the combination of previous works to propose a new method that can be used for other countries/regions.

The language is mostly fine with some minor flaws that most likely will be dealt with in the pre-publishing edition.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We sincerely thank you to review team for the insightful and constructive comments on this manuscript. The manuscript has been carefully revised according to the comments.

We look forward to hearing from you on the revised manuscript. In the remainder of this letter, we provide detailed answers to each of the comments.

We have implemented several major modifications:

- We modified the title of our article, to better describe our idea and research.

• All comments were carefully incorporated into the text of the article, according to the instructions and comments of individual reviewers.

Comments from the Editors and Reviewers:

Reviewer 1:

The topic of the reviewed paper is an important and up-to-date one from the overall goal of promoting railway freight transportation.

The paper provides appropriate background information and references other studies on that topic. The research gap and the contribution of the paper are clearly stated.

The research methodology and proposed procedure was presented step by step making it easy to follow and replicate with the use of a different dataset (i.e. different rail transport system).

The results are described in great detail allowing to answer the stated research question and to verify the assumed hypothesis.

- Thank you very much for the kind words, our effort is to contribute with interesting and high-quality proposals and to point out such a problem that is not normally solved.

Naming 4th section Discussion is formally incorrect – as the proposed approach is novel there is no comparison of achieved results with other (previous) works. That section is more like the summary of the achieved results with added context for its importance and practical application – changing the name to more content-appropriate would be advisable.

• Thank you. Based on this comment, we thought it would be appropriate to name this section 5: "Summary and Discussion".

The conclusions, contribution and further research directions are provided but the recommendations for potential interested shareholders should be elaborated more – as the practical application of the developed procedure may be of great interest to them.

• Thank you for your comment, specific benefits for freight carriers, logistics operators, shareholders and professional public have been added to the conclusion including the paper contribution as a whole.

The great strength of this paper/research is using the combination of previous works to propose a new method that can be used for other countries/regions.

• Thank you very much for your kind words. Yes, the proposed methodology is also applicable to other countries or regions.

Thank you and Best regards

Authors

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors!

I have some questions/comments, you can answer them to improve the quality of the article. You can enrich it a little with an optional discussion on how the results could be applied in the future. In the past, process freight train station management - planning was part of the socio-political process without any wider economic basis. Process is changing nowadays. 

Please see the attachment.

Regards.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear editor and reviewers,

We sincerely thank you to review team for the insightful and constructive comments on this manuscript. The manuscript has been carefully revised according to the comments.

We look forward to hearing from you on the revised manuscript. In the remainder of this letter, we provide detailed answers to each of the comments.

We have implemented several major modifications:

- We modified the title of our article, as requested by Reviewer 1, to better describe our idea and research.

- All comments were carefully incorporated into the text of the article, according to the instructions and comments of individual reviewers.

Comments from the Editors and Reviewers:

Reviewer #2:

Dear Authors!

I have some questions/comments, you can answer them to improve the quality of the article. You can enrich it a little with an optional discussion on how the results could be applied in the future. In the past, process freight train station management - planning was part of the socio-political process without any wider economic basis. Process is changing nowadays. 

Please see the attachment.

Comments and questions referring to manuscript:

Proposal of a methodology for railway stations evaluation from the freight transport point of view

Revised Title:  Methodology for evaluation of the railway stations in significant cities from the freight transport point of view

- Thank you! We revised the title of the article one more time to better describe our idea and research.

Title, Abstract and Introduction:

Could you define the terms of “significant city” and/or “important settlements and big cities”. It is true that cities (not villages) have their own freight station which is not necessary part of “central” train station where we met passengers. Some of cities have their own logistics centres with shunting railway station. Maybe you discuss something about this in Abstract? It will be interesting to understand what the criteria is to start planning the freight transport and logistics within cities on railways. On the other hand, almost each passenger train have some place for (fast) freight delivery, like post-delivery and (small) postal parcels and maybe it could be interesting to extend infrastructure in this field for fast delivery? Usually, the main problem of railway freight transport is last kilometre (mile) delivery you represent as a process in points 1-6 (page 2). Maybe it would be better to have a title and state this in the abstract: a methodology that defines parameters/factors that affect decisions for a certain train station, not a train stop, having freight services or not. There is not only “the freight transport” point of view, but also other “freight logistics services”. “Significant city” in this case is “factor or parameter”, but on the other hand we have many “not significant/small cities, towns” where freight transport is in the role of “bigger cities”. Freight train stations/hubs are outside “the significant city”. Please make some discussion about this in abstracts/introduction.

- Thank you very much for your comments. The definition of a significant city in our case was incorporated in section 1 – Introduction.

- The criteria for starting freight transport planning in the city is briefly described in Section 1 – Introduction.

- As part of the delivery of postal packages in railway passenger transport - we did not deal with this issue, as our research is focused on railway freight transport and staging stations. Postal and courier wagons are almost not used in Slovakia anymore. There are very few cases when such a carriage is assigned to a passenger train. On the other hand, such wagons are serviced (loading/unloading) directly on the platform in the station (this is a real case for Slovakia).

- The methodology includes factors or parameters that define the importance of the city, it can also be a city that is insignificant, but from the point of view of traffic and operations it fulfills the role of a larger city for freight transport. This was discussed in the introduction and also briefly covered in the abstract.

Literature review:

In line 149 you have “ecological footprint” (see https://www.footprintnetwork.org/ourwork/ecological-footprint/ for more). Maybe you change to “carbon footprint” and it is not “zero”. Maybe “zero at the place of transport” with electrified railway. But be carefully, we have also the “(ecological) footprint of noise/dust and particulate matters etc.”, which could be a problem especially at shunting trains and maybe at logistics points. Maybe you discuss this a little. Ecological footprint measures the demand on and supply of nature.

• Thank you. It has been changed. This issue was also briefly commented and explained.

In line 165 you mention “loading/unloading time and related logistics operations” from [33]. But be carefully, especially in freight logistics and markets we should know how commodities/raw materials are traded, e.g. in Austria, logs are bought in [m3], in Italy in [t]. This means that for the wood industry in Italy, transport according to the principle "cut today, sold today" is interesting, which means that if e.g. some station on the corridor to Italy, the log railway is not interesting at all. Logs remain on trucks from the forest, there is no transfer from road to rail. Conversely, e.g. for Austria. In the direction of Austria, we can organize complete storage, what's more, other logistics services can also be offered. Maybe you discuss something about the freight, which is transported on railway, e.g. example of Slovakia. Especially after the EU establishment member states have problem on freight transport “tracking”. Before we had “O/D matrices” of freights? How you propose the future “freight transport” demand which should be the basis for freight train station planning? Is there any literature talking about freight trip generation in Slovakia/EU/World in general not only by railway transport system? How have you planned freight stations in Slovakia so far? Socio-political process of spatial development?

• Thank you for your useful comments and suggestions. The answers to the questions were answered at the end of the second chapter within the possibilities, knowledge and available information of the authors.

Metodology From Google search:

The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a method for organizing and analyzing complex decisions, using math and psychology. It was developed by Thomas L. Saaty in the 1970s and has been refined since then. Maybe you use AHP term rather than AMM (M as multilevel)? In line 206 you wrote “The table shows that the analytical multilevel method (henceforth Saaty's method) is 206 the most appropriate.” Are you sure, you have any indicators that your claim is right: “the most appropriate”? On the other hand, I agree with you, that AHP could be used (it is also preferred by me), but you have only 2 parameter SW(OT) table. Maybe you reference your decision to similar projects about the “Decision process”. It would be nice to make some discussion about it, like in https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/51007, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2020.102351 and maybe https://doi.org/10.3390/su13116471 etc. What about the classical “economic analysis” like CBA for decision support? Any reasons why are not usable in your case?

• Thank you for the comments, they were incorporated at the beginning of the third chapter. Below Table 1, there is explained that this is the AHP method, explaining why this method is the most suitable and why it is not relevant to use other methods. Saaty's method is not the wateriest, but the most accurate. It shows the ratio of its advantages and disadvantages when using the other two methods.

Table 3:

Maybe you express hypothesis mathematically? You ask yourself “How will the rate of use of railway stations by railway companies be reflected?” Maybe you define “the rate of use of railway stations”? “Railway companies”? Are they railway operators, agents etc. Please make discussion. 

• Thank you. The mathematical expression as well as a brief description and explanation of the hypotheses are given in the text below the Table 4.

Line 237: “Each of these methods is applicable to the railway environment.” You mention this before in Table 1. Maybe you extend your decision why you choose AHP? So, your methodology (see Title) is based on AHP. It would be nice to have AHP in the Title.

• Thank you. This was incorporated into the title of the article and also discussed in the article.

Table 4: Please describe in short what is the mean of indicator and connections with markings. E.g. What is “rail weights” stand for? Is this service at train stations or type of “train station” and why is marked with “A” and why not e.g. “C”. I found explanations further in Line3 324+ This should be mentioned at this point. It is the section about Methodology and Material! Explain the data and record sets you got the data from.

• Thank you very much! This is the designation of individual evaluation criteria, for the sake of clarity and to simplify the use and meaning of abbreviations in Slovak and English, we have chosen the A-I designation system.
• Explanations of individual evaluation criteria have been moved to the Methods and Materials section.

Start with the proposal algorithm and then “prove” it that your methodology is the right one for case like yours. Please explain how you make interviews with “railway companies” and how you evaluated them. Did you use any software, did you use any personal for explanation the process? Usual stakeholders/ interviewees are not familiar with AHP process, criteria and maybe questions are tricky, sometimes there are problems with consistency. Please explain this process more in details. You mentioned 5 companies, but you didn’t mention how many interviewees that could be dependent (policy of company?) or independent (assessment of individual expert?).

• Thank you. There is explained and described in the third chapter that interviews and consultations with railway companies took place exclusively in person. Also, the mentioned process is described in more detail, as well as other parts and questions.

Line 273: “It is clear from Table 5 that the ZSSK CARGO carrier as ranked first”. Is it? Table 6?

• Thank you. Yes, the ZSSK CARGO carrier as ranked first. It is mentioned in the table 5. A brief description of this carrier is also mentioned below the table.

Lin 392 “A total of four stations are evaluated in the article”. Which or at what place/location? How did you choose them for evaluation? Maybe Table 8 should be introduced in “Methodology/material” part as special section with the description about the choose. It would be nice to have a small map of these 4 stations.

• Thank you so much! The station selection system was described and briefly supplemented. The original table 8 has been moved to the third chapter and renumbered to table 2. A map with stations was also added.

Results

Table 9: Once you are using markings “A”, once “KV” for “rail weight” e.g., table 4 & 5 and table 9. I suggest having unique markings on all tables/text.

• Thanks for the reminder. This designation was unified to the designation A-I.

Table 10. Categorization of railway stations; It would be interesting to have also other measures related to freight train stations, e.g., decision “to abandon freight train station” or “to migrate it” or “to establish new one” or “to split it”? Probably from the economic viewpoint only few freights train station will be enough ?

• Thank you. In our research, we only dealt with infrastructural services in railway stations. We did not address other measures in our research, but we discuss them as future measures/solutions/possibilities in the Discussion section.

Line 421: “Answer: We accept hypothesis H0 that the rate of railway stations use is higher by carriers and lower by infrastructure managers and reject hypothesis H1 that the rate of railway stations use is lower by carriers and higher by infrastructure managers.” Any mathematical approach? Usually “infrastructure manager” is not using the infrastructure, but “logistics operator” do it if there is no “monopoly”.

• Thanks for the reminder. In this case, it is not a mathematical approach, but only the establishment and correct formulation of the hypothesis, which will subsequently be verified. 
• The mathematical expression as well as a brief description and explanation of the hypotheses are given in the text below the Table 4.

Conclusion

Lines from 490 to 517 should be part of Discussion section.

• Thank you. This reminder has been incorporated and the text, after editing, is part of the Discussion section.

Line 518 “The mentioned issue of railway stations evaluation from the point of view of freight transport can be solved from several points of view. This point of view is supported by experiences from abroad.” This text is confusion and non-understandable. “Several points of view”. What are these points of view (plural)? And then “This point of view”, you have only one (singular)? What does “experienced from abroad” mean? 

• Thank you for your comment. This has been edited.

Before conclusions  Present the constraints and assumptions (limitations) of your methodology or better, is there something you would change in next step. I am missing next step and future work. What about new services and train stations, for smart cities e.g. parcel delivery at all stations (including passenger trains delivery), “automatic” shunting trains, maybe road-rail electric (autonomous) truck/van for city/intercity delivery etc. (https://railway-news.com/yellow-window-supports-sncfs-innovationsserving-tomorrows-mobility/).

• Thank you for your comment. This was incorporated in the Discussion section, where the limitations and possibilities of future research, respectively the extension of the research, are described.

Thank you and Best regards

Authors

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper "Methodology for evaluation of the railway stations in significant cities from the freight transport point of view" falls within the scope of the journal Infrastructures. The paper doesn't meet the standard quality of the paper that should be published in one prestigious journal in the current version. A lot of core elements of one well-written and performed study are missing, so the paper needs major improvements.

- Each abbreviation should be defined in place of the first appearance. 

- Literature review should be enriched with the following sources:

1) Roy, S., Vulevic, A., Hore, S., Chaberek, G., & Mitra, S. (2023). Regional Classification of Serbian Railway Transport System Through Efficient Synthetic Indicator. Mechatron. Intell Transp. Syst., 2(1), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.56578/mits020101

2) Li, M., Zhou, X., Liu, J., Ma, W., & Li, X. (2022). Topological modeling and analysis of urban rail transit safety risk relationship. J. Intell. Manag. Decis, 1, 108-117.

- The materials and Methods section contains some mistakes. It is mandatory to be solved and corrected. Lines 206-207 "The table shows that the analytical multilevel method (henceforth Saaty's method) is the most appropriate". Isn't named analytical multilevel method, then Analytical Hierarchy Process. Correct in the whole paper, for example, line 235.

- It is unclear why you applied AHP method for the first part of the model. Many other more consistent methods for determining criteria weights are determined. For example, BWM, FUCOM, SWARA etc. What new brings your paper? You have only written well-known facts which have been published before. This method has disadvantages.

- Generally, the MCDM model is very poor. You have only nine criteria and three alternatives. This is a poor model. Even alternatives aren't well described and explained. What means other carriers? You didn't provide any explanation or description. Also, how you can group they in one group other? How can DMs evaluate them if don't know what they represent?

- Discussion including detailed implications, limitations, should also be part of the existing discussion.

Author Response

Dear editor and reviewers,

We sincerely thank you to review team for the insightful and constructive comments on this manuscript. The manuscript has been carefully revised according to the comments.

We look forward to hearing from you on the revised manuscript. In the remainder of this letter, we provide detailed answers to each of the comments.

We have implemented several major modifications:

- We modified the title of our article, as requested by Reviewer 1, to better describe our idea and research.

- All comments were carefully incorporated into the text of the article, according to the instructions and comments of individual reviewers.

Comments from the Editors and Reviewers:

Reviewer #3:

The paper "Methodology for evaluation of the railway stations in significant cities from the freight transport point of view" falls within the scope of the journal Infrastructures. The paper doesn't meet the standard quality of the paper that should be published in one prestigious journal in the current version. A lot of core elements of one well-written and performed study are missing, so the paper needs major improvements.

Each abbreviation should be defined in place of the first appearance. 

• Thank you. This reminder was useful.

Literature review should be enriched with the following sources:

1) Roy, S., Vulevic, A., Hore, S., Chaberek, G., & Mitra, S. (2023). Regional Classification of Serbian Railway Transport System Through Efficient Synthetic Indicator. Mechatron. Intell Transp. Syst., 2(1), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.56578/mits020101

2) Li, M., Zhou, X., Liu, J., Ma, W., & Li, X. (2022). Topological modeling and analysis of urban rail transit safety risk relationship. J. Intell. Manag. Decis, 1, 108-117.

• Thank you very much for your comments to improve our article. This has been incorporated and individual references have been discussed in the Literature review section.

The materials and Methods section contains some mistakes. It is mandatory to be solved and corrected. Lines 206-207 "The table shows that the analytical multilevel method (henceforth Saaty's method) is the most appropriate". Isn't named analytical multilevel method, then Analytical Hierarchy Process. Correct in the whole paper, for example, line 235.

- Thank you for your comments, errors have been corrected and other useful information has been added. The AHP method is described in more detail under Table 1.

- The analytical multilevel method (AHP) was created in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and its author is the American professor Thomas L. Saaty. Saaty's analytical hierarchical process offers a methodology that allows modeling complex decision-making situations and selecting appropriate solutions. This procedure was developed to help overcome complex problems. Although it was not originally intended exclusively for collective decision-making, nowadays, due to its systematicity and transparency, it is mainly used in group decision-making situations (Rámik, 2010). According to Ansah (2013), the basic goal of the AHP method is to optimize decision-making processes by prioritizing variables in complex decisions that combine quantitative and qualitative factors. The method focuses on differentiating individual criteria according to the degree of importance. AHP compiles the order of decision items using comparison or correlation between individual pairs of items forming the decision matrix. Appropriate comparisons subsequently generate weight values.

It is unclear why you applied AHP method for the first part of the model. Many other more consistent methods for determining criteria weights are determined. For example, BWM, FUCOM, SWARA etc. What new brings your paper? You have only written well-known facts which have been published before. This method has disadvantages.

- Thank you. There was explained why the AHP method was used for the model in the third chapter. The other methods were not suitable to be used due to insufficient relevance of the data. The new contributions of the article are described in the conclusion.

- We wanted to use known alternatives to solve an unknown problem. The aim of the mentioned methodology is not to present new facts, but a new environment of use where, in our opinion, the methodology could be applied.

Generally, the MCDM model is very poor. You have only nine criteria and three alternatives. This is a poor model. Even alternatives aren't well described and explained. What means other carriers? You didn't provide any explanation or description. Also, how you can group they in one group other? How can DMs evaluate them if don't know what they represent?

• Thank you. The comments were incorporated and explained in the Materials and Methods section. In the conditions of the Slovak Republic, nine criteria are sufficient as an example, because these are the most pressing criteria from the point of view of analysis. At the same time, it is not a problem to expand them by other, but according to the authors, less important criteria (use of a mobile workshop, number of canceled trains, number of train runs as needed,...). Freight rail carriers are divided within the process of liberalization into state (100% of the shares are owned by the state) and private (shares of the carriers are owned by legal entities and individuals). It is the private ones that we refer to as others (https://www.zsr.sk/dopravcovia/infrastruktura/zoznam-dopravcov/)

Discussion including detailed implications, limitations, should also be part of the existing discussion.

• Thank you for your comment. This has been incorporated into the Discussion section.

Thank you and Best regards

Authors

Reviewer 4 Report

There is a widely known analysis method applied (Saaty method) and you describe its assumptions in the article. You could easily skip the method description and move to the main problem of station prioritization. There are some repetitions even in such a widely known issue – for example Table 1 and lines 223-236. On the other hand some explanations are missing. You precisely explain what the ZSR is and at the same time basic information on ZSSK CARGO are missing.

The chart which is presented in Figure 3 is not fully consistent with the text belonging to that chapter. The chart covers eight issues to be determined during evaluation while the patten (3) includes nine of them. The problem of export & import is missing at the chart. Besides isn’t the number of private sidings important in station assessment not just the number of wagons that have been moved to the private siding?

In lines 324-361 you are analysing data obtained in year 2019. Probably. What I am missing is the short introduction where are they from and is it really year 2019 because your statement is not clear [Private sidings utilisation is represented by the number of 2019 wagons that have been moved to the private siding or is represented using the number of 2019 wagons that the infrastructure manager has shunted].

Finally, does that make sense to use sophisticated tool if there are stations which receive 1.1 point and 3976.5 points in the same ranking. I assume it would be obvious that Spisska Nova Ves station is much more higher evaluated than  Zahorska Ves. If there are 316 transport points in Slovakia, the much comparable station should be chosen for the assessment.

The reliable proof reading should be applied. The east European languages have different syntax and it can be traced in your translation. Be precise as well citing data which you have taken for your assessment.

Author Response

Dear editor and reviewers,

We sincerely thank you to review team for the insightful and constructive comments on this manuscript. The manuscript has been carefully revised according to the comments.

We look forward to hearing from you on the revised manuscript. In the remainder of this letter, we provide detailed answers to each of the comments.

We have implemented several major modifications:

- We modified the title of our article, as requested by Reviewer 1, to better describe our idea and research.

- All comments were carefully incorporated into the text of the article, according to the instructions and comments of individual reviewers.

Comments from the Editors and Reviewers:

Reviewer #4:

There is a widely known analysis method applied (Saaty method) and you describe its assumptions in the article. You could easily skip the method description and move to the main problem of station prioritization. There are some repetitions even in such a widely known issue – for example Table 1 and lines 223-236. On the other hand some explanations are missing. You precisely explain what the ZSR is and at the same time basic information on ZSSK CARGO are missing.

• Thank you. These replicates were adjusted and consolidated in Table 1.
• Information about the railway freight carrier ZSSK CARGO was added in the Materials and Methods section.

The chart which is presented in Figure 3 is not fully consistent with the text belonging to that chapter. The chart covers eight issues to be determined during evaluation while the patten (3) includes nine of them. The problem of export & import is missing at the chart. Besides isn’t the number of private sidings important in station assessment not just the number of wagons that have been moved to the private siding?

• Thanks for the reminder. This error has been corrected and added to the flowchart.

In lines 324-361 you are analysing data obtained in year 2019. Probably. What I am missing is the short introduction where are they from and is it really year 2019 because your statement is not clear [Private sidings utilisation is represented by the number of 2019 wagons that have been moved to the private siding or is represented using the number of 2019 wagons that the infrastructure manager has shunted].

• Thank you for your comments. Your requests have been incorporated into the text below table 5. All data used are obtained from the internal materials of the carrier ZSSK CARGO from 2019, as it is the last year so far from which relevant data is available that has not been distorted by the COVID-19 pandemic or the war in Ukraine. Private sidings utilisation (D) is represented by the number of 2019 wagons that have been moved to the private siding. The calculation also considers the wagons that are de-posited on it.

Finally, does that make sense to use sophisticated tool if there are stations which receive 1.1 point and 3976.5 points in the same ranking. I assume it would be obvious that Spisska Nova Ves station is much more higher evaluated than  Zahorska Ves. If there are 316 transport points in Slovakia, the much comparable station should be chosen for the assessment.

• Thank you. Your requests have been incorporated into the text in the summary and discussion chapter. The different station types were deliberately selected in the context of Table 2.

Thank you and Best regards

Authors

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Author!

The article is better prepared now, but still, the Title is complicated and not understandable. I understand that you want to show the process to support the decision of how you (Slovakia) are going to manage freight train station in future. Again, I suggest removing »significant city« form the Title. Better to use the term »hub« than »city«. In general, it is a train station there.

I believe that you could support the decision also without AHP, especially if you know your train stations. Usually, infrastructure manager (owner) has this knowledge. Did expect the results of AHP? Are they »surprise«? Did you use AHP only to »prove« authority that there is a need to continue with e.g., maintenance of some train stations?

It is generally believed that the actual needs should be investigated, and a decision made accordingly whether it is worthwhile to invest in the existing stations or to abolish them. But there are other issues, often related to overstaffing on the railway doing work that may be understaffed.

Regards.

Author Response

Dear editor and reviewers,

We sincerely thank you to review team for the insightful and constructive comments on this manuscript. The manuscript has been carefully revised according to the comments.

We look forward to hearing from you on the revised manuscript. In the remainder of this letter, we provide detailed answers to each of the comments.

Reviewer 2

The article is better prepared now, but still, the Title is complicated and not understandable. I understand that you want to show the process to support the decision of how you (Slovakia) are going to manage freight train station in future. Again, I suggest removing »significant city« form the Title. Better to use the term »hub« than »city«. In general, it is a train station there.

• Thank you very much for your comments. The title has been re-edited according to the reviewer's request. We have removed "significant cities" and replaced it with "transport hubs" to maintain the meaning and focus of our article.

I believe that you could support the decision also without AHP, especially if you know your train stations. Usually, infrastructure manager (owner) has this knowledge. Did expect the results of AHP? Are they »surprise«? Did you use AHP only to »prove« authority that there is a need to continue with e.g., maintenance of some train stations?

It is generally believed that the actual needs should be investigated, and a decision made accordingly whether it is worthwhile to invest in the existing stations or to abolish them. But there are other issues, often related to overstaffing on the railway doing work that may be understaffed.

• Thank you. We would certainly support our decision even without using the AHP method, because we know not only the train-forming stations, but also the local conditions and specifications of the railway infrastructure. However, since it was necessary to solve the mentioned problem scientifically, the relevant method with the most accurate results was the AHP method. Therefore, it can be concluded that the achieved results were expected and are not surprising. The AHP method was not only used as evidence that it is necessary to continue e.g. in the maintenance of some railway stations and their individual elements, but also to achieve a higher level of understanding of the raised issue, including its scientific concept and a high-quality solution with effective practical application for the infrastructure manager and for the carriers. The observations and problems you mention in the third paragraph are the subject of further research and scientific research projects.
• This was briefly commented on in the Discussion section (marked in green).

Best regards

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors made an effort to adopt all my suggestions in the proper way. Now the paper is of higher quality and can be accepted.

Author Response

Dear editor and reviewers,

We sincerely thank you to review team for the insightful and constructive comments on this manuscript. The manuscript has been carefully revised according to the comments.

We look forward to hearing from you on the revised manuscript. In the remainder of this letter, we provide detailed answers to each of the comments.

Reviewer 3

The authors made an effort to adopt all my suggestions in the proper way. Now the paper is of higher quality and can be accepted.

• Thank you very much for valuable comments.

Best regards

Authors

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for your amendments.

No comments

Author Response

Dear editor and reviewers,

We sincerely thank you to review team for the insightful and constructive comments on this manuscript. The manuscript has been carefully revised according to the comments.

We look forward to hearing from you on the revised manuscript. In the remainder of this letter, we provide detailed answers to each of the comments.

Reviewer 4

Dear Authors, Thank you for your amendments.

• Thank you very much for your comments.

Best regards

Authors