Expanding bus service coverage

Singapore has come a long long way since its independence in 1965. Thanks to modernization/urbanization, many old places have made way for the new, as seen by this article on Punggol:

Taken from Straits Times, 20 December 2009

Likewise, in my Simutrans world, the cities have also become more and more urbanised from when I first started my game. Here's an edited screenshot of one of my cities, Hillchester. In the screenshot below, the orange outline shows the boundaries of Hillchester city 200 years ago (when I first started this game), while the red outline shows the current boundaries of Hillchester city.

A recent screenshot of Hillchester city, before a new feeder bus network was implemented.

While previously the feeder buses could cover the whole area of Hillchester city 200 year ago, city growth meant that there were now new areas that were not covered by the feeder bus network. Therefore I had to (sit down and) plan a new feeder bus network that could cover the whole area of Hillchester city. Some considerations for planning include:

• Where shall I locate my bus stops? This (of course) is easy to do on its own; the challenge comes below:
• What route should the buses take? This may seem easy to do, eg. just have one bus route visit all the stops in the city, but to plan optimal routes takes more careful planning!

Here's a screenshot of Hillchester city, with more bus stops that enables more of the city to be served by the feeder bus network:

Hillchester city, now with more bus stops and a new feeder bus network!

Of course other cities also have such improvements. Here are 2 other cities with similar improvements, Pinemouth and Brentham, with before and after screenshots below:

Pinemouth city, before improvements.

Pinemouth city, after improvements.

Brentham city, before improvements.

Brentham city, after improvements.

Coming soon, a focus on some "special" bus services!