Morning Peak-Period Pricing Surcharge of Elderly Passengers Taking Express Buses

Jingxu Chen,Wendong Chen,Chengxin He,Xinlian Yu

doi:10.1155/2021/5563205

Jingxu Chen, Wendong Chen + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/5563205

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Abstract

This study deals with the elderly fare pricing issue for taking express buses in the morning peak period. As many elderly passengers are not commuters, fare discount policy may not be an opportune option when buses get overcrowded. Imposing surcharge on the elderly becomes a potentially beneficial measure that encourages an appropriate number of elderly passengers to circumvent the most crowded buses. The elderly pricing surcharge problem is formulated as a bilevel model, in which the upper-level model is to make the pricing surcharge decision, and the lower-level model is the equilibrium passenger assignment that represents passengers’ bus choice behavior. It is classified into the special case and the generic case depending on the number of buses that impose surcharge. Several useful properties of two cases are analyzed, and a trial-and-error solution method is later developed to solve these two cases. Numerical experiments show that the elderly pricing surcharge scheme is not always applicable to all the demand scenarios, which owns a certain effective interval.

Highlights

Public transit exerts a crucial part in sustainable urban development, which is recognized as an effective way to alleviate the problems attributed to the automobile, such as road congestion and air pollution
Fare discount policy is commonly implemented in cities worldwide, e.g., the elderly are privileged to take buses using discount bus tickets. is policy instrument aims to attract more elderly passengers and increase ridership
In Situation 1, as ρ gradually increases, the shifting sequence is that elderly passengers forgo taking bus j prior to bus j + 1 (j, j + 1 ∈ Λ1), and instead they select bus −ξ − 1 or earlier buses in the equilibrium solution

Summary

Introduction

Public transit exerts a crucial part in sustainable urban development, which is recognized as an effective way to alleviate the problems attributed to the automobile, such as road congestion and air pollution. During the morning peak period, imposing surcharge on some particular buses is a worthwhile attempt that encourages elderly passengers to actively circumvent the most crowded buses (these buses are mainly used for commuting) In such case, elderly passengers still enjoy fare discounts when taking the remaining buses.) Crowding worsens the quality of bus service and its perception [7, 39], Bjorklund and Swardh, [40], and it harms the health of passengers, especially the elderly. E main objective and contribution of this study are to propose a methodology for determining the elderly fare pricing for taking express buses in the morning peak period. It aims to acquire the optimal pricing surcharge of elderly passengers in comparison with the current fare discount policy.

Problem Description and Model Development

Findings

A Generic Case with Multiple Buses in Set Λ