Customized City Bus Fare Pricing Based On Bi-level Programming Model

In recent years, the process of urbanization continues to accelerate, and urban traffic congestion problems have become increasingly prominent. Along with the diverse needs of residents travelling, the conventional modes of transport have been gradually unable to meet the growing travelling demand. As a branch of diversified public transit, the appearance of customized city bus is important for urban transport. While, customized city bus fare as an effective way to regulate traffic demand, the economic means to guide urban transport structure, it’s of great theoretical and practical significance to scientifically formulate customized city bus fare.Based on this, the bi-level programming model is built to formulate reasonable fare for different customized city bus’s lines. While, the main research works are as follows:(1) An overview of the customized city bus’s origins, definitions and customization process are done; the customized city bus’s attributes, characteristics, and the difference with the rest of transport modes and its development trends are analyzed; the current situation of customized city bus fare in different cities are analyzed. The customized city bus fare should be determined according to the positioning of city’s public transportation. This lays foundation for choosing pricing methods and establishing related model.(2) The bi-level programming model is built to formulate customized bus fare. Firstly, based on user equilibrium principle, the underlying network equilibrium model is built under the premise of elastic demand considering three travel modes which are car, bus, customized city bus. The model can well describe the travel mode choice, travel route choice. Secondly, considering the launch of customized city bus in most cities is to ease congestion in the city, the upper model is constructed with the objective of maximizing social welfare. And for the bi-level programming model, a mixed algorithm is given which combine block Gauss-Seidel decomposition, MSA iterative algorithm and Genetic algorithm.(3) A calculation example is designed to calculate the fares of customized city bus, and the best fares of different lines are obtained. The calculation example also demonstrates the effectiveness of the model and algorithm and provides a theoretical basis for the scientific pricing. It also discussed on the basis of best fares of customized city bus, how to further improve the social welfare.