Ticket Pricing On Railway Passenger Traffic Under Competitive Market

This thesis studies on ticket pricing of railway passenger traffic under competitive market condition, which is divided into two main problems-the average price between different traffic modes and the graduated ticket price on one traffic mode. The former contains profit maximization pricing model, market equilibrium price model and system optimization model when different objective functions are selected. The graduated ticket pricing model based on railway passenger corporations can improve their profit by setting different prices according to passengers’demand properties, however, it can be divided as noncompetitive and competitive pricing according to different market conditions.The main method of this thesis is model on ticket pricing problem under different market conditions, and providing efficient algorithm through examples. The models contain two main forms:one is mathematical programming, the other is game theory model. Mathematical programming is used to solve optimization problem, such as profit maximization pricing, system optimization model, graduated pricing under noncompetitive market. The latter is used to solve competition problems, such as market equilibrium price model and graduated pricing under competitive market. In these models, it shows that when the bi-level model contains two linear programming, the reaction function is step function, so the model can be solved by sensitivity analysis based on simplex method. What’s more, it provides one method to solve two-stage game theory model by transferring it to mathematical programming model.The main conclusions of this thesis are under the supposing of travel cost is indifferent with passenger volume, the essence of assignment model is transportation problem; it provides one method to solve market segmentation by using passengers preference parameter, which is important for graduated pricing; it proves the existence conditions of market equilibrium price is different graduated tickets have different price and quality; at last, it gives the ticket pricing strategies under different market conditions.