Transit system design: A model for optimizing bus route alignment

The design of public transportation networks is made difficult by the multitude of conflicting objectives; at the same time transit agencies are under increasing pressure to provide better transit services while facing increasing costs and reduced budgets.;Bus routing and scheduling variables are very important to transit planning because they are directly related to attributes that affect ridership. Despite the importance of routing to both transit customers and providers, routing has received little attention in the literature and there is a lack of analytical tools to aid transit planners in the design of effective route alignments.;This research addresses some of these issues and presents a decision-making framework to determine bus route alignments using weighted linear programming. The model employs a demand forecasting model and the characteristics of the transportation network to select an optimal combination of route distance and ridership given a set of physical and resource constraints. This technique, in turn, increases operator's revenue through increased ridership and the enhanced use of capital resources.