Research On The Period-based Pricing Problem Of Intercity Railway Under Elastic Demands

With C hinese intercity railway large-scale construction and put into operation, the transportation capacity improved greatly and has become an important engine for promoting regional economic integration, op timazing the industrial structure and promoting regional economic development. In the situation of integrating transport competed increasingly, passenger organization optimization of intercity is to a effective factors of keeping a strong competitive, Among them, the fare is the most important factor on the competitive of varieties of transport modes, many intercity railways presented insufficient capacity and overcrowding during peak-periods, and appeared in excess capacity and low attendance phenomenon during off-peak-periods, which is mainly due to have unified fares between peak-periods and off-peak-periods, and most travelers choose to travel in the peak-periods. During the peak-periods, too much congestion affect passengers travel comfort and the quality of service, instead of excess capacity waste lots of railway transportation resources during the off-peak-periods.In connection with the characteristics of passengers uneven distribution at various periods, analysis on the existing research literature at home and abroad, according to the relationships between traffic and the number of depature line with various periods, start to explore on estabilishing peak-periods models of intercity railway under elastic demand, considered on elastic demand and transportation capacity of every period, research on optimizing intercity rail fares, and the main contents as follows:(i) Passenger demand characteristics is the foundation of this research, through the statistics and analysis of the characteristics of passenger flow and the spatial and temporal distribution of intercity railway in different periods, that has obvious uneven distribution of time under elastic demand of passenger flow.(ii) Access to relevant information, make a detailed analysis of the high speed railway pricing, summarizes the high-speed railway pricing theory, strategy, the affecting factors, and the pricing method, analysis on high speed railway system status at home and abroad, points out the main existing problems in our country about high-speed railway pricing.(iii) Aim at uneven distribution of elastic demand for intercity railway, which intercity railway departure train is fixed, built at different times travelers’ utility function and the total cost of the utility function, put the train transport capacity and government price each period as constraints, established a bi- level programming model, the upper is the largest intercity railway sector income, the lower is the lowest utility equilibrium model of travelers each period, through reflecting on the relationship about fares and passenger traffic, designed a iterative algorithm which is consist of Frank-wolfe algorithm and Genetic algorithm.(iv)Through the Beijing- Tianjing intercity railway as an example, according to the actual data of Beijing- Tianjin intercity passenger flow. Using the paper established model and algorithm to abtain the periods pricing, and analysised on the pricing results and passenger flow distribution. Results show that: The intercity railway department gets better efficiency through period-based pricing, the same as the travelers have lower cost, it is conducive to scientific and orderly development of Beijing- Tianjin intercity railway.In this paper, through the establishment of the intercity railway period-based pricing model, the intercity railway passenger distribution is more balanced, the same time this method meets the requirements of train planning, and it has a important significance which is to improve travelers comfort and reduce the cost of passenger transport.