Bus Route Design Problem for Rural Tourism Objectives: A Multiobjective Approach

Rural tourism bus routes are an essential component of rural public transport systems, intending to serve tourist trips with passengers moving between critical regional transport nodes and tourist attractions. This paper presents a methodology for the optimal design of rural tourism bus routes by minimizing total travel costs for tourists and maximizing the total quality of tourism bus services. Road scenery, road design attributes, and route popularity elements are integrated into the evaluation of tourism bus service quality. The constraints for the bus route planning and tourism demand are taken into account to guarantee the rational design of rural tourism bus routes. A solution approach is put forward based on the initial solution set generation procedure and strengthens the elitist genetic algorithm. Finally, the bus network in a rural tourism destination of Nanjing is taken as the case study to validate the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed model.