Assessing the optimality of bus stop locations in urban areas using quantitative techniques

Transportation represents the city's veins. It must cover every single part of it, in order to desert different services and serve the population. However, the city shape is changing with time, which have an impact on the transportation system users, for that reason the adaptation of the transportation system is necessary. Bus stops locations have considerable effects on the quality of the transit service, especially when it comes to functioning time, which is one of the top priorities of bus riders. This study proposes a method of determination of the bus stops number and locations, it provides practical recommendations to aiming to minimize the total time spent on the journey of users of public transportation. In the scope of this study, the number and location of bus stops for a given bus line in the city of İzmir were increased by two different methods, iteratively the number of bus stops that minimizes the total duration was determined by the passengers as follows: arrival at the stop, boarding, dwelling and going to the destination point. The riders of the bus were located around the bus line by 500m, their origin and destination points were chosen randomly in this area. In a next step, the same method has been applied on diffrent the numbers of passengers riding the bus. On this line, the optimal stop numbers and positions are determined on the line according to different passenger numbers. Thus, the optimal stop numbers and positions are determined on the line according to different passenger numbers.