Research On Toll Rate Setting Method Improvement Basing On Fairness

Thanks to the toll road policy implementation, the highway construction has experienced rapid development, in 30 years. In 2013, China’s total highway mileage of 4360000 km, including 100000 km of expressways, ranking first in the world. The bottleneck effect on economic development of the highway traffic has been effectively alleviated. Its development goals have been transformed into a moderate advance. Fairness and efficiency are equally important in highway development. As the charging period of the first loan toll road ended, in the next 15 years, an annual average of about 580 kilometers of road will stop charging. Overdue charges, extend the period of fees, concession right transfer and unified loan repayment, unity is not the way to solve the problem of inability to repay the debt. The government to bear part of the debt is one of the ways to solve the problem. Highway mileage increasing, so that the road network structure improvement. Continuous economic development, traffic volume continues to rise. The dual role of the network and the traffic volume growth, the operation toll roads from the initial poor conditions, to the current traffic saturation and even congestion. But operating income increased dramatically, and even appeared in a high profit. The operator with the price agreement with the government to maintain high profits, and refusing to improve traffic conditions. The continuous development of highway, the toll road mileage increasing, the charging mileage, rates are high, industry profits are criticized by the society. On the other hand, the toll road is faced with the financial problems of debt pressure and huge losses. In the background of the highway development will pay more and more attention to fairness, in view of the questions of what is the proportion of the cost of government, much profit enterprises should get and what is the price formation mechanism, this thesis aims to promote fairness, has conducted the research to the toll rate formulation method.Firstly, the existing highway toll rate method are reviewed. In the choice of fairness and efficiency as the foundation, this thesis gave the definition of road traffic rates fairness improvement and the involves three aspects; according to the general logic of pricing theory, constructed the theoretical framework of toll rate setting from the method layer and model layer; based on the related theory, aiming at the problems involved in improvement of fairness, made theoretical analysis and the necessary theory preparations. Discussed the government share part of the highway cost is the result of fairness improvement and what cost should be shared; defined the related concept of sharing ratio calculation, analyzed the model; researched and built the sharing ratio calculation model according to the influencing factors. Discussed the connotation of reasonable rate of return and the improvement of fairness; discussed the form, measure of reasonable rate of return; according to the connotation of reasonable rate of return, the concept of the lower limit was studied, established calculation model, the parameter calibration method is improved; the upper limit of the concept was studied, calculation model is given. Discusses the fairness improvement of the price formation mechanism and how to integrate various methods; based on a review of related pricing method, gave the meaning of stochastic user equilibrium based on the equivalent axle load frequency; generalized travel cost function based on the number of the equivalent axle load frequency, and the corresponding stochastic user equilibrium assignment model and bi level programming model and its solution algorithm are given. Finally, according to the method given in this paper to calculate case, verify the practicality and reliability of the model.The main research results and conclusions of the thesis can be summarized as:(1) The fairness improvement of toll rate refers to change the pricing target from efficiency to fairness, is to improve the fairness of the distribution of benefits between the government and the users, operators and users, and individual users. The theoretical framework consists of methods layer and model layer, the cost accounting and the price formation mechanism as the research object. Toll roads belong to the club products, has monopoly power in traffic service quality, has a competitive relationship with Ordinary highway in free access service. The cost of highway is divided into fixed cost(construction) and variable cost(operation).(2) After the improvement of fairness, the pricing principle of the loan toll road from "efficiency first" to "fairness and efficiency are equally important", construction cost should be shared by the government and the users, operating costs should be beard by the users. The government income brought by highway is tax increases, the user returns is time saving and fuel saving, both of which decide the cost sharing ratio. After calculation, sharing ratio is 54%-84%.(3) After the improvement of fairness, the pricing principles of operating toll road is "priority to efficiency, consideration to fairness". The reasonable return, rate of return on investment, is a value range, keep the operators from investing to other industry, but also to ensure the interests of the users are not infringed. Rate of return associated with the fixed cost, cost and income are beard by the user. CAPM combined with WACC as the lower limit mode, the interbank offered rate as the risk-free rate of return, calibration market expected rate of return according to the input-output table. Calculate the upper limit by the service level difference method. After calculation, a reasonable rate of return is 7.4%-10%.(4) Toll road price is formed in the government regulation pricing and the competition with the highway. The improvement of fairness is to combine the toll by weight with traffic equilibrium assignment model, following the principle of “balancing efficiency and fairness”, by using the equivalent axle load frequency to measure the generalized travel cost. The two aspects of the stochastic user equilibrium based on equivalent axle load frequency are model adjustment and path selection. Path selection in short-term, model adjustment in long-term. And constructed the corresponding stochastic equilibrium model and bi level programming model in fisk form. Cost sharing proportion and reasonable rate of return is the constraints of the upper level model. Finally, the dissertation gives the algorithm of genetic simulated annealing. Traffic rates results shown in the text.