Optimal Placement of Bus Stops using Particle Swarm Optimization

Bus systems play an important role in the modern city. Carefully designed bus stop locations can lift up overall transportation efficiency and save more time for passengers. In this paper, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO)-based approach is proposed to find the optimal placement of bus stops in Waterloo/Kitchener area. The selection of the bus stops placements takes into account neighborhood population, family income, age distribution, and other factors. The overall goal is to minimize the average travel time of the passengers which is composed of two parts namely passenger time in the bus and out of the bus. Experimental results on real bus lines in Waterloo/Kitchener region, Canada showed that both PSO and adaptive PSO provide shorter average commuting time compared to the original bus routes. Moreover, the optimized placement needs less number of bus stops compared to the original number of stations.