Finding Optimal Bus Service Routes: Internet-Based Methodology to Serve Transit Patrons

Internet-based transportation systems are becoming widespread due to advances in Internet, computing, and geospatial information system (GIS) technologies. An internet-based methodology that allows public transportation users to find routes and buses between pairs of origin and destination addresses is discussed in this paper. The methodology is considered as a framework where several different transportation-related objectives can be met. Of these objectives, finding the sequence of bus routes with a minimum number of bus-to-bus transfers between any two entered addresses is focused in the work presented in this paper. With the proposed methodology, users are provided with information on the bus routes (bus numbers) they should take and locations where they should get on and off the bus including all bus-to-bus transfer points. The methodology is intended to be easily accessible and available through standard Web browsers on the client machine and be interoperable with respect to data and software facilitating integration to other data and software. To demonstrate some of the features and capabilities of the methodology, a prototype of the methodology, called iBus, is also discussed.