A Genetic Algorithm Approach to Metro Design Problem

Because the making and developing of metro system need a lot of investment like construction and maintenance cost, performance and effectiveness of metro design and its operational planning should be noticed. Also, metro cause directly and indirectly such effect like development of a city, mobility in economical centers, change in the pattern of trips, change land use and etc, we can lead these effect to desirable direction by correct and purposeful planning. Therefore, the optimum and correct design of metro system, specifically in network routing, is so important. For solving this problem in large network with standard and conventional methods, a lot of evaluations are needed. Usually, these methods require more time and cost, so, the necessity and tendency for heuristic method can show itself. Until now, many heuristic methods have presented for solving route generation and these problems, but most of them design one metro route and pay less attention for generating a network path and analyze them. Moreover, the parameters and constraints used in these methods are not sufficient and suitable. In this paper, we propose a heuristic method based on Genetic Algorithm to solve metro network design problem. At first, many routes are generated on the basis of proposed algorithm; and then, by Genetic Algorithm and with synthesizing routes, several networks are created; and finally, a suitable network will be selected. This proposed method is evaluated in the form of case study and its results shows that this method can be adaptable for metro network design in cities.