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In the metropolitan cities of developed and developing countries, longer journeys are mostly performed by two or more modes. In the event of availability of suburban trains and public buses, commuters prefer to travel a longer stretch of their journeys by train, so as to avoid traffic congestion on roads, and the remaining part by buses to reach local areas if their final destination is not in close proximity to railway stations. Normally suburban trains have fixed corridors and buses have the flexibility to serve remote local areas. Thus design of feeder routes from railway stations to various destinations and the transfer time from trains to buses plays a very important role and can be controlled by transport planners. A considerable amount of research has been done on the independent design of a bus route network without considering the effect of train services. Researchers have made attempts using heuristics, simulation, expert systems, artificial intelligence, and optimization techniques for design of routes and schedules. So far, limited effort has been made in modeling coordinated operations. In this research, a new hybrid algorithm which exploits the benefits of genetic algorithms and a well tested heuristic algorithm for the study area is discussed. More convincing results in terms of feeder routes and coordinated schedules at the selected railway station are obtained by the proposed hybrid algorithm as compared to earlier approaches adopted by the writers for the same study area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Many attempts have been made to solve bus route network design problems by splitting it in two stages, one for routing and the other for scheduling. Some researchers have made attempts to solve network design problems using non-traditional optimization techniques also, but not much has been done on modelling coordinated operations involving transfers from one mode to another. In this research, feeder routes and frequencies leading to schedule coordination of feeder buses with main transit are developed simultaneously using genetic algorithms. The coordinated schedules of feeder buses are determined for the existing given schedules of main transit. Thus the developed feeder routes and schedules are complementary to each other. As a case study the Dun Laoghaire Dublin Area Rapid Transit (DART) (heavy rail suburban service) station of Dublin in Ireland is selected. Finally the outcome of the research is a generated feeder route network for feeder buses and coordinated schedules of feeder buses for the existing schedules of DART at the selected station. The results of the proposed model indicate improved load factors on developed routes and also the overall load factor is also improved considerably as compared to the authors’ earlier model. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]