Route Design Model of Feeder Bus Service for Urban Rail Transit Stations

As an important part of urban public transportation systems, the feeder bus fills a service gap left by rail transit, effectively extending the range of rail transit’s service and solving the problem of short-distance travel and interchanges. By defining the potential demand of feeder bus services and considering its relationship with the traffic demands of corresponding staging areas, the distance between road and rail transit, and the repetition factor of road bus lines, this paper established a potential demand model of roads by opening feeder bus services and applying a logit model for passenger flow distribution. Based on a circular route model, a route starting and ending at urban rail transit stations was generated, and a genetic algorithm was then applied to solve it. The Wei-Fang community of Shanghai was selected as the test area. Per the model and algorithm, the feeder route length was conformed to a functional orientation of short-distance travel and the feeder service of a feeder bus; the route mostly covered where conventional bus lines were fewer, which is a finding that is in agreement with the actual situation; the feasibility of the model and algorithm was verified.