Abstract
Limited-stop bus services are a highly efficient way to release more potential of the public transit system to meet travel demand, especially under constraints on vehicle fleet size and transportation infrastructure. This work first proposes a visualized fare table for the design of limited-stop bus services along a public transit corridor, along which many lines of public transit carry a heavy load of demand back and forth every working day. Based on this proposed fare table, a set of fare strategies and desired aims of fare policy, a differentiated fare structure is established to improve social equity and increase revenue. The nature of the structure can help travellers understand how to be charged between their origins and destinations (e.g. flat, time-based, stop-based or quality-based pricing) and then plan their trips efficiently. Secondly, a model is formulated to minimize the total social cost in designing a fixed demand limited-stop bus service system with a differentiated fare structure. Thirdly, numerical results are carried out with sensitivity analysis within three scenarios of differentiated fare structures. It is found that a differentiated fare structure has a great effect on passenger path choice behaviour and resulting optimal design of bus services. An attractive feature of this differentiated fare structure is that it could not only enhance the operator’s revenue and social equity but also reduce passenger transfers and social cost.
Highlights
Public transit plays a crucial role in meeting the need for individual mobility and environmental improvement
This work first proposes a visualized fare table for the design of limited-stop bus services along a public transit corridor, along which many lines of public transit carry a heavy load of demand back and forth every working day
It is found that a differentiated fare structure has a great effect on passenger path choice behaviour and resulting optimal design of bus services
Summary
Public transit plays a crucial role in meeting the need for individual mobility and environmental improvement. It is found that one of the most difficult things for delaying the adoption of a differential fare structure is the difficulty for users to understand how to be charged This may not be as important to passengers as transit operators think it is, especially when new technologies, including smart card and payment systems, help to facilitate the provision of various types of fare structures, but this perception obviously remains. To avoid complicating the current discussion on the new type of far structures, we will analyse environmental effects of such fare structures applied to limited-stop bus services in another piece of research work Last section summarizes the findings in this paper and points out further research directions in this arena
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