Bus Network Design Considering Transfer Stations

Bus network design is the first step in urban transportation planning process, and due to its influence on the consequent steps, such as timetabling, vehicle scheduling and crew scheduling, this step plays an important role in the process of transportation planning. One of the important issues in transit network design is locating transfer points. However, in the previous studies this issue was not considered, and it has been only paid attention to optimizing parameters such as travel time. This study is focused on defining the location of transfer points, as a result of transit network design, such that transfers are performed in points with higher capacities. Applying the genetic algorithm, the presented methodology is implemented on a virtual network, and the results showed that considering transfer constraint affects defining the location of transfer points.