Methods Of Ticketing And Subsidy Policy For Urban Rail Transit

As the backbone of urban public transit, Urban Rail Transit (URT) plays an important part in relieving traffic jams and shaping low-carbon, energy conservation and environmental protection trip mode. Besides, in order to guarantee the social welfare and exert the backbone effects of URT, the fare price always cannot cover the costs, and with the network expanding of URT, the government may face heavier financial burden more than ever before.In view of the choice fare structure is mainly depended on the experience, and lack of linkage mechanism between pricing and subsidy. Based on the summary of system characteristics, the paper then detailed reports the influencing factors of URT pricing strategy, and proposed a framework of URT pricing strategy as well. Considering the financial subsidy as a key influence factor of pricing, the paper designs the linkage mechanism of pricing and subisidy strategy, and proposes an optimization model. The main contents and conclusions are as follows:(1) On the basis of existing research results, conbined with the existing URT system operational reality. The paper analyzed the URT pricing strategy influence factors from two aspect, the direct participants of URT stackholders and the external environment. And use it as the basis in proposed the framework of URT pricing strategy.(2) Taking into account the differentiated elasticity of demand in different trip distance, the paper proposed a model that considering the integrated utility of passenger and operational company with the target of maximizing the integrated utility and using the fare structure and fare level as decision variables. In the constraints of train capacity, safety headway, and the regulation of fare and service, a genetic algorithm is designed and used to solve the problem. The results show that sectional fare has obvious advantages in reducing operating losses, improving social welfare and attracting short distance passengers compared to Flat fare.(3) The paper proposed a bi-level programming model to describe the hierarchical relationship of government and operating company, which the upper level targeting with maximizing the social welfare, and the lower level with goal of maximizing profit. The paper studies the fixed-price contract subsidy mechanism, as well as incentive subsidy mechanism based on passenger-kilometers and train-kilometers respectively, and sensity analysis of subsidy grants were carried out. The results show that incentive subsidy mechanism can generate a higher social welfare performance than fixed-price contracts, especially for the subsidy based on passenger-kilometers. Besides, the subsidy based on passenger-kilometers can reduce the fare level and attract more passengers when compared with other subsidies, but it will extract a higher financial subsidy grants; furthermore, the subsidy based on train-kilometer can reduce the operation cost and shorten departing time interval remarkably, but in this method has no significiant effect on fare level, the fare level is the highest relatively. According to the subsidies sensitivity analysis, social welfare and operating profits were downward when the subsidy caused an oversupply of operating company; the variation of financial subsidy makes no difference of operating strategies and the optimal subsidy achieves in the break even condition.(4) Take the TOD traffic corridors as a study objects, financial subsidy for different public transport modes can affect the travel costs of each mode, thus makes the distribution rate and spatial distribution of settlemet to be different.In order describe the three layer hierarchical relationship of passenger, operating company, government and the competitive relation among different traffic modes. Using Cobb-Douglas Utility Function to desicribe the passenger utility, and proposed a Stackelberg Game Model with the objects of government and public transport operators. Through the analysis of numerical examples, the paper discusses the situation of Oligopoly competition, Social wealfare maximization as the baseline scenario, and three subsidy situation of fixed-price contract, passenger kilometer based and train-kilometer based subsidy methods, totals five situations. The results show that subsidy based on passenger turnover can improve the share rate of public transport, but also makes a great financial pressure; as the numbers of families remain the same, the situation of Oligopoly competition will cause residents concentrated in the central city, residents diffusion outward to the periphery of city with the situation of subsidy, especially in the situation of passenger-kilometer based subsidy.