Time-sharing Pricing Stragegy Of Suburban Railway Based On Bi-level Programming Model

To support the urbanization in China,suburban railway has gradually become a scientific choice for the first tier cities to solve the problem of traffic connection,to transfer the spillover resources and to relieve the pressure of the central city.Also,it has a profound impact on people in the metropolitan area.A series of problems began to emerge with the steady growth of traffic demand: Suburban railway has obvious commuting characteristics,the direction of peak flow is concentrated and the proportion of direct flow is large,which leads to the shortage of traffic capacity in peak and the adequacy in off-peak.The former not only seriously reduces the service level,but also easily leads to safety problems;The later leads to the waste of transport capacity and low operating efficiency.According to the historical research data at home and abroad,suburban railway passengers have a strong sensitivity to fare and suburban railway in China has been implementing a fixed pricing mechanism,so the passenger flow can not be guaranteed.Using the time-sharing pricing strategy to guide passengers to adjust their travel time,it can not only alleviate the contradiction caused by the unbalanced passenger flow and improve the service level,but also increase the revenue of the department.Based on this,we set up a time-sharing bi-level programming model to optimize the fare.This paper first analyzes the passenger pricing theory by summarizing the implementation effect of time-sharing pricing strategy and fare optimization methods.Secondly,determining the definition of suburban railway by making clear the function orientation,compares and analyzes its differences with other rail transit modes.The impact factors of suburban travel are explained from two aspects of personal attribute and transport mode attribute.Then,the common carfare frame and the theory of time-sharing pricing is explained.The article coverage the common carfare frame used in different levels of rail transit,analyzes the implementation schemes of carfare frame of suburban railway at home and abroad,points out the shortcomings of the fixed fare ticket system of suburban railway and can consider the time factor to improve it;discusses the factors that influence ticket price and carfare frame.Then put forward the theoretical basis of the time-sharing pricing,It includes revenue management and demand price elasticity.To expound the relationship between passenger travel and ticket price,the feasibility and rationality of time-sharing pricing are explained from the perspective of demand price elasticity stratification.Analyzed the effect of time-sharing pricing strategy from the aspects of passenger flow composition,difference of demand elasticity of different passenger flow,adjustment range of time-sharing pricing.Next,a time-sharing pricing model was established.The peak and valley is divided by fuzzy mathematics membership degree.Then the paper constructs a bi-level planning model for maximizing the revenue of suburban railway and minimizing passenger’s general travel cost,so as to achieve a balanced pricing scheme between departments and passengers.A heuristic algorithm combined the GA and the MSA algorithm is designed to solve the problem.Taking Chengdu-Dujiangyan express railway as a case study,the travelers’ habit was statisticed and analysised though a passenger questionnaire.Then the time value of passengers in peak and off-peak is obtained and the bi-level planning model and algorithm are verified.The results show that the time-sharing pricing strategy can effectively balance the passenger flow in peak and off-peak hours.It can reduce passenger’s general travel cost and improve the Department’s revenue.Finally,the paper put forward some strategies and point out the future research direction.