Station Location Selection Approaches for a New Bus Rapid Transport Line

Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) systems can be put into service with lower costs in comparison to metro systems. In addition, they can meet the demand for high-capacity travel, similar to metro systems. In Istanbul, Metrobus, which is an example of BRT, covers the highest portion of the transportation demand in its region. The success of the system has provoked discussions about the new routes of the system in the city. Thus, where to locate the new BRT line and its stations emerges as a research question for academics and city planners. In this study, two different methods, which are supported by GIS/Spatial information, are discussed to analyze where to locate the stations of a new BRT line. The first method is an adopted weighted p-median-based mathematical model that deals with a line instead of a network. The second approach is a heuristic algorithm considering the demand of coverage according to the covered population in an iterative structure. As the result, both approaches produce outcomes for station locations. The heuristic algorithm converges to the optimum results and shows that it is able to reach in a simple analysis structure