Using a simulated annealing algorithm to solve the transit route network design problem

This paper uses a simulated annealing algorithm to solve the optimal bus transit route network design problem (BTRNDP) at the distribution node level. A multiobjective nonlinear mixed integer model is formulated for the BTRNDP. The proposed solution framework consists of three main components: An initial candidate route set generation procedure that generates all feasible routes incorporating practical bus transit industry guidelines; and a network analysis procedure that assigns transit trips, determines service frequencies, and computes performance measures; and a simulated annealing procedure that combines these two parts, guides the candidate solution generation process and selects an optimal set of routes from the huge solution space. Three experimental networks are successfully tested as a pilot study. A genetic algorithm is also used as a benchmark to measure the quality of the simulated annealing algorithm. The presented numerical results clearly indicate that the simulated annealing outperforms the genetic algorithm in most cases using the example networks. Sensitivity analyses are performed and related characteristics and tradeoffs underlying the BTRNDP are also discussed.