Optimization of Bus Route Planning in Urban Commuter Networks

Bus routing is one of the most important elements of public transit system planning. This article presents a model for optimizing service headway and a bus route serving an area with a commuter (many-to-one) travel pattern. The bus route is optimized by minimizing the total system cost, including operator and user costs, while considering diagonal links in the study network. A method is developed for transforming this network into a pure grid, which enables construction of pure grid network models applicable to irregular grid networks. A case is presented to demonstrate the application of the model. Results show that the optimal bus route is sensitive to demand distribution over the service area. The developed model is particularly useful for planning a new bus service and evaluating an existing one in many cities embedded with general grid networks