Bus stops problem

[acertijo4ever]

Hi all, I have the following problem I need to solve, and I hope you can point me to the right direction.

I have a bunch (4000) of people addresses in a city that are mapped to coordinates (longitude and latitude). I also have different bus routes (up to 17), that go through the city picking up these people, that I could draw to google maps for example. This routes were designed based on human experience, and the buses that travel on them practically have to stop every time a person raises one's hand (sometimes on every block), which is pretty inefficient.

What I would like to do is to define a number of Bus Stops, along all of the routes, that comply with the following restrictions:
- Each bus stop groups the most people near that point according to their addresses.
- The number of Bus Stops doesn't have to be the minimun available, but the best in order for people not to walk too far from their houses.
- The routes should not be modified.

I know there's a lot of work to be done so I'd appreciate any help.

Regards.
Joel

[Insectoid]

This is a very difficult problem, especially dealing with the real world. I doubt programming will help you much, besides some scripting to import your addresses and routes into mapping software, and maybe some graphing.

I would plot all the addresses and routes on a map.
The most dense areas likely need more stops than sparsely populated areas. More popular routes should have more frequent stops. Lower income housing should have more stops than higher income housing. The best solution really depends on your specific city and using all the available data.