Megacities around the world are highly concerned about the impacts of urban transportation. The rapid urbanization and motorization in megacities have a direct impact on sustainable development. Hence, it is very frequently to find the multiple actors from both private and public sectors involved in the design and operation of urban passenger transportation systems to make decisions that seek at optimizing their own particular objectives. However, urban passenger transport system is a very complex task involving multiple criteria related to economic, environmental and socio-political issues. Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques actually aid the decision making process by assessing such problems. This paper presents a review of research papers published between 1982 and 2014 (up to May) concerning MCDM for the design and operation of urban passenger transport systems. From the analysis over more than 30 years, the current paper highlights the importance of taking into account the multiplicity of actors and their own decision criteria, as well as the resolution technique. Finally, some suggestions for future research are discussed.