Bus Network Planning of Suburban University Town and Downtown Based on Travel Happiness

The university town is generally located at the outskirt of the downtown; basic public transportation is the main travel mode of students, because of long travel distance. Based on this, the concept of travel happiness is introduced into the public transportation network planning to improve travelers’ satisfaction. First, a questionnaire about the socio-economic attributes, travel attributes, environment attributes as well as the happiness was carried out to obtain the factors influencing travel happiness. Second, based on the Bayesian structural equation model, the quantitative relationship between travel happiness and factors was established. Third, a dual-objective planning model including the happiness and travel cost was established, which considers the constraints of different functional networks. Finally, taking the university town of Chang’an District, Xi’an City, as an example, the public transportation network planning method has been adopted. The research illustrates that the bus network planning method can be adopted to improve travel happiness.