Impact of Significant Discounts for Low-Income Groups of Passengers in Railway Transport on the Development of Transport Performances

Abstract

To achieve the sustainable and green mobility available to everyone regardless of their social situation, it is necessary to regulate the fares by the responsible public authority. Some countries have introduced free fare or significant discounts for selected groups of passengers, such as children, students, and pensioners, which has brought up a question if such a measure is efficient from the social point of view. On one side, this approach would change the transport behaviors of socially disadvantaged groups of population, on the other side, it can lead to an outflow of fully paying passengers due to a lower comfort and quality of services. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of introduced measures in fares on the transport performances of rail passenger transport, using the methods of time series analysis and forecasting.