The Research On Expressway Concession Toll Pricing

Expressway, as an important infrastructure, not only relates to the development of the transportation industry, but also plays an important role in the national economy. While the development of expressway needs a large amount of capital investment, therefore, to meet the demands of economic development and people's requirement, solving the financial problem is the first priority. Concession is a kind of operation mode associated with a degree of exclusivity in business within a certain geographical area, and the concessionaire pays either a fixed sum or a percentage of revenue to the entity with the ability to assign exclusive rights for an area or facility. Accordingly, the concession mode can retake investment quickly and make some profits, and also attract social capital, and in the end solve the capital problems. Meanwhile, this operation mode can meet the requirements of modern enterprise system, and improve the management level of Expressway Companies. Currently, concession is the major operation mode adopted in expressway construction and management in the world.Base on the study of relative literature on expressway concession, the paper analyzes the pricing background and considers the pricing method is a decisive factor to the success of the concession operation. There are many flaws exist in China's expressway concession, for instance, the method is unscientific, the pricing system lacks flexibility. Therefore, learn the successful experience from both China and abroad has a profound meaning for China's expressway concession operation and further studies.The paper first introduce the characteristics of expressway, such as the quasi-public feature, natural monopoly, differential benefit, and the increasing returns to scale; and then the paper studies their theoretical bases and their influences to the expressway concession. In view of the special natures of expressway determine the feasibility of concession, the essay gives a definition of the expressway concession, and after analyzes the operation situation of expressway concession both at home and abroad, and the relative legal regulations and operation mode, the essay offers some suggestions for future development in the end.Besides, the paper studies the expressway toll collection system, and analyzes the elements that will affect the pricing system, for instance, the cost, rate of investment return, vehicle flow rate, franchised period, social endurance ability, etc. In the following part, the paper analyzes the above elements and their influence to the pricing model, and puts forward to quantify each element and lay a foundation for building the pricing model. The paper also analyzes the principle methods used in the expressway pricing, and compare the advantages and disadvantages of them; based on it, the following part analyzes the main problems and their causes in Chinese expressway concession.In addition, the paper summarizes the merits and demerits of expressway concession; then, base on certain hypothesis, the paper builds a pricing model for expressway concession, and simplified the model through simplified parameter and quantity, and gets the price formula in the end. To prove the pricing model, the paper collects data on GuangHui expressway widely and tests it in the model, and the result turns out the pricing model is scientific and flexible.At last, through price simulation, the paper concludes that rate of return on investment, vehicle flow rate and franchised period are the main factors influencing the expressway pricing system, and the paper offers some recommendations to improve the pricing model for future studies in the last section.