A mathematical model for finding the optimal locations of railway stations

Regarding the importance of competitive advantages among the transportation systems, improving the costumer’s satisfaction is an important factor in attracting them to these systems. In this research, we focus on the effects of constructing new stations on users and a new mathematical model is proposed for this problem. In the proposed model, two simultaneous effects on customers by constructing new stations are investigated. One effect is the improvement of the demand access to the railway network and the other one is related to the increase in the travelling time for customers sitting in the train. As the first effect, the less the customer’s distance to the stations, the more attractive to use this system and the second effect concerns the increased in the traveling time in new stops which may result to customer’s dissatisfaction. The proposed mathematical model achieves the time optimality, furthermore; it maximizes the covered population to locate the stations. For locating the optimal site for new stations, we need to apply the population usage information. The proposed model is examined on the Mashhad’s subway as a case study and the results are reported.