RENUMBERING IN CITY WITH HIERARCHICAL CLUSTERING METHOD OF BUS STATION NUMBERS: THE CASE OF KAHRAMANMARAŞ PROVINCE

Bus stations are one of the most widely used components of the public transportation system by citizens. Many critical information, such as the list of bus lines passing through the station, the station-based schedule of the bus lines and when the vehicle operating in the transportation system will pass through the station, are calculated and published according to the station number. For this reason, the station number is being memorable by the citizens and the station numbers of the bus stations, which are spatially close to each other, are numerically very close to each other, are very important in terms of easy learning of the station number. Bus station numbers are usually numbered according to the order in which the line routes pass through the stations. However, considering this case, there is a huge difference between the inconsistency in the station numbers and the station numbers of the stations that are spatially close to each other, when the line route is changed or when the station numbers and the order of passing from the stations are different for different lines passing through the same station. In this study, a hierarchical clustering-based new approach has been proposed to eliminate the problems in bus station numbers and to set bus station numbers that are spatially close to each other. The proposed approach was carried out using the real bus line route and bus station data of Kahramanmaraş Metropolitan Municipality. In the experimental evaluations, the difference between the bus station numbers created by the classical method and the difference of the bus station numbers created by the hierarchical clustering method that spatially close to each other were compared. Experimental results show that the proposed hierarchical-based clustering method creates a closer number of station that are spatially close to each other when compared to the classical method.