Fare System Research Articles

An empirical study on train choice preferences of high-speed railway passengers: the case of Nanning-Guangzhou railway and Nanning-Beihai railway

ABSTRACT This paper presents a systematic investigation of the train choice preference heterogeneity of High-Speed Railway (HSR) passengers under market segmentation to understand their train choice comprehensively. A stated preference survey was conducted for the Nanning-Guangzhou Railway and Nanning-Beihai Railway. Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was employed to identify homogeneous subgroups and segment the passenger market of each line into three segments: private travelers with a long total duration (PTLTD), business travelers (BT), and private travelers with a short total duration (PTSTD). Mixed Logit (ML) models were constructed for each subgroup sample to assess passengers' preferences in train choice. The results show that each class exhibited unique characteristics and preferences, and train fare and running time, departure date and time, and train frequency were statistically significant factors affecting train choice. This study can furnish theoretical and decisional support for HSR operators to design train operating schemes and flexible fare systems.

Impact of a Truck Safety Fare System on Rail Freight Transport Volume

Impact of a Truck Safety Fare System on Rail Freight Transport Volume

Multiple Regression Based Dynamic Parking Fare System

This paper explores the development of a web application for dynamic parking pricing, leveraging ReactJS, ExpressJS, MySQL, Google Maps API, and machine learning techniques. The system addresses the challenge of static parking fees by incorporating real-time data and a trained model to predict optimal parking prices. The core functionality hinges on a multiple linear regression model. This model is trained on historical parking data, considering factors such as parking space availability, time of day, base fare, air pollution levels, and user ratings. By analyzing these variables, the model predicts an accurate price for each parking space. The web application utilizes ReactJS to provide a user-centric interface. Users can search for parking spaces and view dynamic pricing in real time. Integration with Google Maps API offers a visual representation of available parking locations along with their corresponding prices. ExpressJS serves as the backend server, facilitating communication between the ReactJS front end and the MySQL database. The database stores historical parking data used for model training, along with real-time updates on parking availability and user ratings. This project contributes to the field of intelligent parking management by proposing a data-driven approach. The system promotes efficient resource allocation and user convenience through dynamic pricing based on various influencing factors. This approach aims to establish a fair and adaptable pricing structure for parking spaces, ultimately improving overall parking management. Keywords: ReactJS, ExpressJS , Google-Maps-API, Multiple Linear Regression , Dynamic Fare , Parking Management

Prospective Evaluation of the Public Transport System in the Petrosani Basin

Public transport is one of the most important functions of a city, which can have a major impact on the elements that support sustainable development: society, the environment and the economy. In order for residents and tourists of the Petrosani Basin to benefit from a predictable, systematized public transport system with well-established travel times, it is necessary to analyze some current factors and trends regarding public transport in the Petrosani Basin. This prospective study confirms that the use of the public transport system in the Petrosani Basin is decreasing, a decrease mainly associated with the lack of spatial accessibility, comfort and safety for passengers (inappropriate stations, the lack of air conditioning in means of transport, the lack of a modern fare system, the lack of means of information in the stations, etc.) but also with the change in people’s attitudes imposed by the protective measures taken as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. However, it should be noted that the public transport system in the Petrosani Basin is strongly influenced by the geographical characteristics of the Petrosani Basin, by the sharp decrease in the population (a negative natural increase and a reduction in the school population) and by the increase in the number of private cars.

A comprehensive analysis of the electronic fare collection systems effectiveness implementation on public transit and prospective directions of its application in Ukraine

The object of research is the effectiveness of the implementation of electronic fare collection systems on public transit. Applying the electronic fare collection systems is a general trend in improving public transport services for users. In the pre-war period, the systems began to be implemented in many cities of Ukraine. At the same time, this activity was not of a systemic nature and at the current stage it is mainly considered as a means of ensuring more convenient conditions for the use of scheduled passenger transport services for passengers. The article focuses on a broader understanding of the effectiveness of the fare collection systems implementation, their role in ensuring the internal integration of the multi-modal public transport system, increasing the operational efficiency, providing the safety of transportation and increasing the attractiveness of public transit services for the population as a real alternative for the private cars to use. The implementation efficiency of the electronic fare collection systems in public transit should be expressed through various aspects. There are 9 aspects to be considered: system integration; comfort ensuring; transportation safety assistance; operational efficiency and passengers' travel time reduction; integration into the management and planning systems; implementation of the flexible fare system; conduction of the flexible fare policy; development of reasonable income distribution system; increase of the scheduled passenger transport services attractiveness. It is suggested to use systemic approach for integrated multimodal public transit system creation. It requires the development of an intelligent transport system that would integrate separate functions of the electronic fare collection system into controlling, managing and planning subsystems. The practical introduction of the solutions proposed regarding the prospects to develop electronic fare collection systems in the cities of Ukraine will make it possible to increase the efficiency of their use and contribute to the improvement of the quality of transport services for passengers.

The inequality effects of public transport fare: The case of Lisbon's fare reform

Spatial segregation of social groups within cities and inadequate transport conditions are frequently pointed to as major barriers to improving urban livelihood conditions for disadvantaged groups. For that reason, accessibility measures have increasingly been used as a tool to measure inequality. However, traditional accessibility measures fail to capture both travel costs and individual characteristics, which are central to equity. Therefore, in this paper, we discuss the importance of incorporating fare cost, fare affordability, and individual socio-economic characteristics of transport users into accessibility equity measurements. Given the April 2019 fare policy change introduced in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA), this study examines how the fare restructuring, the integration of all public transport (PT) modes into a single pass with a maximum cost of 40€ per month, affects inequality levels. Using survey data collected in June and July 2020, we compare the self-reported trip modes and travel costs under Lisbon's previous and current public transport fare systems. We first define 4 benefits associated with the reform and calculate them for all survey respondents. We then used statistical analysis to determine which sociodemographic and locational groups benefited the most from the reform. Finally, using a pseudo-Palma ratio, we compare accessibility inequality levels for income and spatial subgroups before and after the fare price change.Results show that fare reform had positive effects on commuter accessibility levels, when interpreted as the reduction of generalized costs. Income, age, gender, and transport modal choice were found to be the main characteristics that distinguish the most benefited groups, while other characteristics played a more modest role. These effects, when interpreted from a spatial perspective presented a clear positive association with public transport supply levels. Relative to the impact of the fare reform on equity of benefit distribution, results reinforce that price policies can reduce inequalities.

Leveraging ride-hailing services for social good: Fleet optimal routing and system optimal pricing

With the penetration of ride-hailing services, the impacts of transportation network companies (TNC) on network performance grow. TNC comes with a ubiquitous sensing and pricing system that may be leveraged by public agencies to improve transportation system performance. This study first formulates and solves a mixed equilibrium (ME) of personal driving vehicles and ride-hailing vehicles, where TNCs centrally assign routes to ride-hailing vehicles to achieve fleet-wide optimum. We propose a novel fleet behavior desired by TNCs, named fleet-optimal behavior with service constraint (FOSC), which provides a good compromise between total fleet cost minimization and fairness among riders. However, we show that the system state of FOSC can be far from the system optimum state. To this end, we propose a novel Optimal Ride-hailing Pricing (ORHP) scheme for public agencies as an efficient manner to intervene ride-hailing online platforms. The essential idea of ORHP is to regulate and subsidize TNCs, in exchange for guaranteed network performance improvement. Under ORHP, public agencies set the value of a subsidy for each link for any TNC rider using this link. The subsidies are provided to TNCs, not directly to riders. TNC receives subsidies, and determines the best way to provide compensations for each rider who deviates from his/her ”shortest” route, determined by FOSC. TNC’s ultimate goal is to reduce their total cost, including total fleet vehicle travel time and total compensations, subtracted by the total subsidy received from public agencies. The ORHP is likely less controversial than other pricing schemes, since it calls for voluntary participation of travelers who are provided with multiple route options. Because it is built into the TNCs’ fare system, it is cost effective to implement and hard to game. This would be a win-win: a win for public agencies to cost-effectively improve system performance leveraging TNC’s platform without building physical infrastructure or services; and a win for TNC to profit from subsidies and improve service quality. ORHP is formulated as a bi-level optimization problem, solved with a sensitivity analysis based algorithm and tested on two networks implying the ORHP scheme can be effective: a small total subsidy provided to TNC can lead to significant improvement in system performance.

Analyzing the trade-off between minimizing travel times and reducing monetary costs for users in the transit network design

The efficiency of the planning process in public transport is represented through different measures, which are practically impossible to optimize simultaneously. This study defines a bi-objective optimization problem for the transit network design to analyze the trade-off between minimization of travel times and reducing monetary costs for passengers (which was not addressed in the literature) while considering a hard constraint for operational costs. Indeed, the minimization of monetary costs for passengers is relevant in transport systems without a complete integrated fare system, where passengers may pay for each trip-leg; thus, modeling monetary costs for users is essential when referring to the system’s accessibility and route choice. To achieve our goal, we implement an epsilon-constraint algorithm capable of obtaining high-quality approximations of the Pareto front for benchmark instances in hours of computational time, which is reasonable for strategic planning problems. Numerical results show that the conflict between both objectives is evident, and it is possible to identify the more useful lines to optimize each objective, leading to relevant information for the decision-making process. Finally, we perform a sensitivity analysis on the budget parameter of our optimization problem, showing the classic trade-off between the operational costs and the level of service in terms of travel time and monetary cost.

Change in departure time for a train trip to avoid crowding during the COVID-19 pandemic: A latent class study in the Netherlands.

After the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, crowding has been highlighted as a risk factor for contracting acute respiratory infections (ARIs) such as COVID-19, which has affected the demand for public transport. Although several countries, including the Netherlands, have implemented differential fare systems for peak and off-peak travel to reduce crowding during the rush hours, the problem of overcrowding on trains has remained prevalent and is expected to cause more disutility than even before the pandemic. A stated choice experiment in the Netherlands is conducted to understand the extent to which people can be motivated to change their departure time to avoid crowded trains during rush hours by offering them real-time information on on-board crowding levels and a discount on the train fare. To gain further insights into how travelers respond to crowding and capture unobserved heterogeneity in the data, latent class models have been estimated. Unlike the previous studies, the respondents were segregated into two groups before the start of the choice experiment based on their indicated preference to schedule a delay earlier or later than their desired departure. To study the change in travel behavior during the pandemic, the context of different vaccination stages was also provided in the choice experiment. Background information collected in the experiment was broadly categorized as socio-demographic, travel and work-related factors, and attitudes towards health and COVID-19. It was found that the coefficients obtained for the main attributes which were presented in the choice experiment (on-board crowd levels, scheduled delay and discount offered on full fare) were found statistically significant, and in line with previous research. It was concluded that when most of the people are vaccinated in the Netherlands, the travelers become less averse to on-board crowding. The research also indicates that certain groups of respondents, such as those who are highly crowd averse, and are not students, can be motivated to change their departure time if real-time crowding information was provided. Other groups of respondents who were found to value fare discounts can also be motivated to change their departure by similar incentives.

Requiem for transit ridership? An examination of who abandoned, who will return, and who will ride more with mobility as a service

To adhere to health regulations and reduce the risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, employers, mobility operators, and travelers alike adopted new strategies such as teleworking, rigorous sanitation, and social distancing. In this research, we examine the individual-level factors contributing to transit ridership abandonment and return decisions. We utilize comprehensive survey-based data of transit users in the Chicago metropolitan area (N = 5648) collected prior to reopening. We investigate three ridership behaviors, namely (1) discontinued public transit ridership, (2) the intent to return to pre-pandemic transit ridership levels once health concerns are alleviated, and (3) the likelihood of using public transit more often if its fare systems are integrated with other mobility services such as ridehailing and micromobility. Examining the role of sociodemographics, employment characteristics, transit investment priorities, and travel behavior before and during the pandemic, this research reveals fine-grained details about transit usage decline, as well as future intentions. The results indicate that teleworking, unemployment, and vehicle access are the major factors behind discontinued transit ridership. Analysis of race, ethnicity, and gender effects reveals that vulnerable users often have a higher risk of abandonment coupled with a lower likelihood of returning. These results point to the need for transit agencies to consider the specific concerns of ethnic/racial minorities and women. Encouragingly, there is an opportunity for agencies to attract more ridership with fare integration. Several respondent segments would use transit more if fare systems are integrated with ridehailing and micromobility, highlighting the importance of lowering the barriers to accessing these mobility services. This research informs several policies that can be adopted by transit agencies and other mobility providers. We discuss the importance of an equitable return to transit, possibilities for Mobility-as-a-Service with fare integration as a starting point and stress the significance of teleworking in future transit policies.

Equity fare system: Ranking of transport development criteria in integrated passenger transport

The purpose of the use of equity fare systems lies in preventing transport marginalization by means of favouring participants in an unfavourable position with the aim of ensuring equality. In integrated passenger transport, equity is characterized by the specificities of the region where such a system is either planned or already carried out. The criteria that describe said specificities are the development of fare zones from the transport, economic, and demographic aspects. This paper assesses the transport development criteria in integrated passenger transport. The Analytic Hierarchy Process methodology was used to determine the relevance. It is based on the rankings made by 117 European experts on transport, economy and demography. The assessment of the criteria will ensure the development of a new equity fare model for calculating fares in integrated passenger transport.

Measuring Customers’ Satisfaction and Preferences for Ride-Hailing Services in a Developing Country

Ride-hailing services play an important role in developing countries where conventional transport systems are not enough to meet the needs of commuters because of increased populations. This form of transport has gained much popularity in developing regions because of the inclusion of motorcycles and rikshaws in ride-hailing services. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there has been little research on passengers’ behavior towards these ride-hailing services that focuses on social protection and the fare system in developing regions. Therefore, this research study is aimed at investigating the behavior of commuters towards these ride-hailing services in Lahore, which is the second largest city in Pakistan and can be considered as a case study of a developing country. A total of 531 useable valid responses were collected through face-to-face interactions, including the sociodemographics (SEDs) and behavior of commuters towards these services. The results of an explanatory factor analysis (EFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed that some of the significant latent variables of these ride-hailing services are comfort, convenience, privacy and security, the fare system, social protection, and safety. The commuters’ overall evaluation of these services is positive and affects their present and future preferences. The structural coefficient between convenience and the variable of present preference is significant and negative, which shows that there are respondents who infrequently use ride-hailing services despite having high satisfaction. The riders’ satisfaction with privacy, security, social protection, safety, and comfort has a positive and direct impact on their present preferences as the structural estimates are positive, which means that the higher their views on privacy, security, and comfort, the more frequently they intend to use ride-hailing services for commuting. Increased social protection, safety, privacy, and security will improve the evaluations of the commuters and influence their present preferences for these ride-hailing services. Even though there are regulations on these ride-hailing services, some concrete policy interventions are needed for improvements in commuters’ overall evaluations of these services in order to influence their future preferences. The findings of this research study, if applied in the real world, can improve the overall evaluation of the commuters and positively influence their present and future preferences for these ride-hailing services.

‘The gates of paradise are open’: Contesting and producing publicness in the Brussels metro through fare evasion

Drawing on the example of the metro in Brussels, we examine public transport as a public space. We uncover how the conception of the metro and its fare system reflects an idealisation of public transport that conflicts with the daily experiences and structural inequalities among its users, manifested, in part, in fare evasion. We explore this practice through qualitative interviews, observational studies and analysis of online evader platforms. In contrast with existing research, we recognise fare evasion as a complex practice that challenges and shapes the publicness of public transport through knowledge exchange, solidarity building, social encounters and a redefinition of social norms.

Commuters’ Perception using Public Transport Services and its Impact on Passenger Satisfaction: The Case of Sodo Town, Wolaita Zone, Southern Ethiopia

Public transport should become part of a solution for sustainable transport in the future. However, to keep and attract more passengers, public transport must have high service quality to satisfy and fulfil a wide range of different customer’s needs. The purpose of the study is to examine the influencing factors measuring customers’ satisfaction, especially the impact of the factors on customers’ satisfaction with public transportation in Wolaita Sodo Town of SNNPR. The data was gathered through a structured questionnaire from the public transport commuters. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 385 randomly selected public transportation passengers in Wolaita Sodo Bus Terminal, Wolaita Zone. Descriptive and Inferential statistics to analyze the data using SPSS version 22. Under Inferential statistics, multiple regression analysis was used to identify the relationships between factors influencing customer satisfaction and commuters’ satisfaction. The results showed that the Fare system has the highest impact on customer satisfaction, followed by Transport comfort, Services provided and Scheduled timings. Three other factors, namely accessibility, Availability of facilities and Terminal environment, were insignificant to customer satisfaction. The analysis of the variance of demographic variables on customer satisfaction with public transport showed that gender, Age, and marital status were statistically insignificant in predicting customer satisfaction. In contrast, Religion, income level, and travelling frequency were statistically significant in predicting customer satisfaction. A flexible and affordable fare rate system should be encouraged and implemented for all routes at different distances to make the service more affordable, satisfy customers’ requirements, and be competent and profitable for the enterprise.

Proposal for a subscription-based fare system for unlimited rides on public transportation nationwide

Proposal for a subscription-based fare system for unlimited rides on public transportation nationwide

Development of Public Transport Fare Payment Systems in the Republic of Belarus

The Republic of Belarus uses traditional and modern systems of fare payment for public passenger transport. In the traditional system, paper tickets are used as proof of payment; such a system is common in all settlements of the country. Electronic tickets generated in mobile applications of various electronic systems, on physical media – contactless smart cards, as well as records of relevant transactions from bank card accounts are used in modern fare systems to confirm payment for a transport service. Both single trips and multiple travel tickets can be recorded in the form of an electronic ticket or an electronic entry on the contactless smart cards. The paper proposes measures aimed at increasing the level of payback of public passenger transport, analyzes the volume of passenger traffic for 2016–2020, the decisions of local authorities in force in the cities of Belarus that establish regulatory and cost indicators for fares in public passenger transport. The comparison of modern fare payment systems implemented in cities is carried out. TapXphone and T-PAY systems are recommended for distribution on public passenger transport in Belarusian cities on the basis of the comparison of the positive аnd negative aspects of the functioning of electronic fare collection systems from the position of a passenger and a carrier.

VECM을 이용한 화물자동차 운임 결정요인의 실증 분석

In the domestic transportation market, the transportation share of freight cars accounts for 92.6%. In the truck market, real freight rates decreased due to the increase in cost burden due to the increase in prices such as oil prices, and accordingly, overwork, overload, and speeding competition intensified. Accordingly, in 2018, the government implemented a safe fare system as a way to advance cargo transportation and applied it to import and export containers and cement (BCT). Therefore, this study attempted to provide implications for matters to be considered when expanding the safety fare system through time series analysis on the influence of truck fares and various exogenous variables. The research method analyzed the unit root, cointegration test, and VECM of freight rates by tonnage recorded in the actual cargo information network and time series indexes such as domestic economic indicators, industrial indexes, price indexes, and supply indexes. As a result of the analysis, it was confirmed that the exogenous variables affecting the freight rates of each ton class were different, with a positive(+) effect on the whole industry index and import index for trucks of less than 8 tons.

Defining Equity Criteria for Determining Fare Zones in Integrated Passenger Transport

Fare system models in public transport are researched based on the fact that they represent a direct and flexible instrument of influencing passenger behavior and covering public transport costs, which contributes to the sustainability of public passenger transport. Integrated passenger transport, as a concept of public transport management that uses a zonal fare system, defines transport service prices within a fare zone. An analysis of existing fare systems reveals that current systems do not offer equitable access for passengers and that the transport service is not available to everyone. To resolve the issue of the transport disadvantage of potential passengers, society and space, fare system models must be changed to provide equity for disadvantaged participants of the system. This would do away with transport and social disadvantage in the analyzed region. The aim of this research is to define equity criteria in determining fare zones in integrated passenger transport. This is a precondition for an equitable fare model which would ensure an impartial and fair charge of transport services within zones.

Beep4Me: Automatic Ticket Validation to Support Fare Clearing and Service Planning.

An integrated transport service fare system, supported by an agreement for ticket revenue sharing among service providers, is an essential component to improve the experience of the users who can find single tickets for the integrated transport services they look for. A challenge is to find a model to share the revenue which all providers agree on. A solution is to adopt data-driven approaches where user-generated data are collected to extract information on the extent each transport service was used. This is consistently used. However, it suffers from incomplete data, as not all users always validate their ticket when checking out or when switching lines. We studied all technologies available to support automatic ticket validation in order to record when the users access and exit each service line. The contributions of this work are the following: we give an in-depth description of the inner workings of this novel approach describing how we take advantage of each technology; we present the developed solution (Beep4Me), which adds new functionalities to an existing mobile ticketing platform; and we describe our testing framework, which includes most cases users might encounter during a trip. Our results demonstrate how it is possible to collect key data related to validations which can be used first for clearing purposes and then for network planning/fleet optimization.

Optimizing bus line platform assignment across bus stations in Utrecht

Due to its increased popularity, public transport has grown considerably, which has resulted in more lines that are operated with higher frequencies. As a result, the current bus stations that are located in strategic places like city centers to serve as a hub are becoming too small. If there is no space to enlarge the station, then usually the best option is to create a second bus station close-by. This raises the problem of distributing the bus lines over the bus stations, such that good connections are offered to transfer passengers. We have considered this problem in the city of Utrecht, which is a middle-sized city in the center of the Netherlands. The central transit hub, which is located next to the central railway station, consists of several separate bus stations. The goal of the research is to minimize the total travel time for all passengers who want to transfer at the hub. Here we are not allowed to adjust the current timetable, and we have to take the capacity and vehicle limitations into account. To find out which journeys are made daily and by how many people we use data from a digital fare system. This results in passenger groups, and for each group we compute the relevant travel options given the current timetable. Thereto, the routes are split into an inbound itinerary, a transfer within the same bus station, and an outbound itinerary; the validity of a travel option depends on the assignment of the bus lines to the bus stations. We decompose the problem into first finding a distribution of the lines over the stations and then assigning them to a platform at the station of choice. In the first subproblem, we find the best set of transfers using Integer Linear Programming (ILP), resulting in a station assignment. In the second subproblem, for each station, we distribute the bus lines over the platforms. In this subproblem, there can be multiple lines assigned to a single platform, as long as there are never more vehicles at the platform simultaneously than physically fit. The goal is to maximize the comfort of the transfer passengers by assigning tight transfers to adjacent platforms; this problem is solved using ILP as well.