Research On Fare Strategy Of Urban Rail Transit Line

Abstract:Fare strategy, as an important part of management location decision of urban rail transit, is the key factor of attracting passenger flow and get appropriate market share of passenger flow, and determines urban rail transit’s operating conditions and competitiveness. Thus, reasonable fare combining service level comprehensively has vital practical significance both to make full use of urban rail transit and realize sustainable development.This paper firstly analyzes the current situation of overseas and domestic urban rail transit and their fare strategy, and points out that fare policies are significant and effective to the planning, operations and development of urban rail transit.Urban rail transit fare strategies include fare structures and fare level. Fare structures are divided into flat fare and graduated fares. After analyzing the optimization goal, influencing factors and economics principle of fare strategy, we propose a rail transit line fare strategy model based on operating plan under passengers’elastic demand, and the optimization of fare level under various fare structures comprehensively considered.The model’s objective function is to maximize social profits, containing passenger flow demand and benefits of operation enterprises. The model reflects the relationship between rail transit passenger demand and passengers’ generalized travel cost which contains operational service level and fare level. And train running frequency is used to represent service level of operation enterprise in above model. Simulated annealing algorithm is designed based on the model’s features. Taking Changsha Metro Line2for example, we get optimal fare levels of flat fare, graduated fares measured by distance and stations respectively, then analyze sensitivity of headway and fare level and practical fare strategies based on optimal solution are given. In the end, through the establishment of urban rail transit fare strategy evaluation system including evaluation indexes of operating enterprise, passengers and society interests. Then Changsha Metro Line2’s initial fare strategy through analyzing and evaluating the optimal fare levels under different fare structures and horizontal comparing with other domestic cities is proposed. The research of urban rail transit fare strategy in this paper provides a decision support for the sustainable development and management policies formulated of urban rail transit operation.