MULTI-OBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION FOR BRT ROUTES USING GENETIC ALGORITHM: NEW CAIRO CASE STUDY

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is a cost-effective public transport mode suitable for mega cities compared to other modes. In the planning process, route selection is a main target considering the available infrastructure, modes, land-use, and socio-economic characteristics. Additionally, the environmental, social, and economic objectives should be considered to achieve sustainability. In this research, a new multi-objective optimization algorithm for BRT route selection using Genetic Algorithm is presented. The proposed algorithm involves four stages: generating sufficient initial set of feasible routes, considering the more effective parameters, selecting the optimum route considering constraints and objective functions, and adopting the resulting optimum routes to select the following optimal route. New Cairo City, Egypt, through its VISUM transport model, was investigated as a case study where its road network is evaluated after considering the nominated BRT routes compared with the Do-Nothing scenario. The comparison shows 8% reduction in travel time in the city and 10% reduction in traffic emissions. Keywords: Bus Rapid Transit, Route Optimization, Genetic Algorithm, Visum DOI： https://doi.org/10.35741/issn.0258-2724.58.1.60