Multi-Step Heuristic Method for Bus Terminal Location Problem

Bus terminals are one of the main facilities that have a key role in the collection and distribution of passengers within an urban transportation network. The location of a bus terminal strongly affects its performance. Owing to the increasing demand, it is sometimes necessary to add a new bus terminal to the existing urban bus network. Finding a proper location, however, is a challenge that is influenced by different transportation and socio-economic considerations, which in turn affects the surrounding land-use and traffic patterns. In this paper, a new multi-step heuristic method is proposed for the bus terminal location problem to identify a new bus terminal location based on the existing network as well as other transportation considerations and constraints. This is achieved by identifying the existing bus stops that have the greatest potential to be turned into a bus terminal. Other factors taken into consideration are the locations of the existing bus terminals, adjacent land-use, construction costs, node connectivity, and system accessibility. Owing to the multi-objective nature of the problem, a goal programming approach is used to formulate the objective function. To evaluate the proposed model, it was applied to the city of Shiraz in Iran. The results show that the model can provide acceptable and reliable outcomes