Abstract
This research develops decision support for railways on operational decisions of running special trains to tackle higher demand on specific routes during seasons of festivals and holidays. These operational decisions comprise of utilizing rolling-stocks and determining optimal fare-price structure in a competitive environment coerced by other travelling service providers. The influence on the demand-shares by the competitors of railways is incorporated in decision making to utilize the rolling-stock accordingly. A novel mixed integer bilevel programming model is proposed in which the railways is considered a leader and a group of all competitors to railways is a follower. The leader has to maximize the expected revenue by deciding on routes, rolling-stock assembly planning and fare-pricing for special trains subject to constraints on resources and the anticipated demand arising out of Nash-equilibrium fares of the follower. A diversified-elitist genetic algorithm is introduced to solve the proposed model. The proposed methodology is illustrated by taking a test situation from Indian Railways. The empirical analysis demonstrates the success of the proposed model in strategically addressing the fare-price competition and preparing the operational plan for running the special trains.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
