Bus Routing Optimization: a Case Study for the Toulouse Metropolitan Area
Résumé
This paper investigates the efficiency evaluation of a public transport using an analysis of Origin-Destination
matrices (mOD). The use of a trip-chaining method on the automatically collected transport data provides
a realistic and accurate representation of traffic flows characterized by mOD. The introduction of a critical
walking distance and an user flow at bus stop allow us to probe possible network configurations and identify
the best one in terms of service offer, ecological impact and operational cost. The configurations comparison
allows to identify the levers for the transport management. We deploy this methodology on a french case study
for the Toulouse Metropole Occitanie region. The main obtained results shows that for a walking distance
close to 1000m, the distance per day on a bus line can be optimized by 3km for a time saving close to 20%,
representing an annual gain of more than 1ton of CO2 for a user loss of around 3%. These results suggest that
low-cost optimization of a transport network is possible while maintaining a high-quality, environmentallyfriendly
service offering.