Optimizing the routes of the hop-on hop-off sightseeing bus in Taipei city: a new method based on the criteria from major tourism cities

The objective of a hop-on-hop-off sightseeing bus is to provide the highest accessibility to the most desirable attractions of the place. Four tourism cities worldwide, London, Vienna, Edinburgh, and Singapore, were studied to benchmark the system's spatial and non-spatial criteria. The head/tail breaks principle sets up the threshold to measure the popularity, and the space syntax measures to evaluate the accessibility. The primary goals for a sightseeing bus system should consider the benefits of the bus takers, the revenue and costs of system providers, and the marketing and competitiveness of local authorities. Hence the length and number of bus stops per route should be limited to no more than 1.5–2 hours per loop. The four accessibility measures for attractions were considered higher than the city's second-rank (M2) mean value. The results showed that in the optimizing process using the benchmarked criteria, the coverage ratio of Grade 1, 2, and 3 attractions was enhanced by 25%, 42%, and 20% higher, respectively, than the existing sightseeing bus system in Taipei City. This optimizing accessibility process should be transferable to other means by planners to increase the tourist visits, such as the bicycle system, shared scooters, and walking areas.