A collective incentive strategy to manage ridership rebound and consumer surplus in mass transit systems

Zhiyuan Liang, Yili Tang, Jianing Yu and Yacan Wang

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 2024, vol. 182, issue C

Abstract: This paper models and analyzes a collective incentive strategy with passenger departure time equilibrium to maximize the total passenger surplus, which could further enhance the sustainability of transit systems in the post-pandemic era. In the proposed collective incentive strategy, passengers with transit passes have dynamic discounts where the discount value depends on the total number of passengers enrolled in the incentive program. A bi-level optimization model is established by considering passengers' demand elasticity and responses to the strategy, which eventually determines the starting time and duration of the collective incentive strategy during the time of the day. We further analyze the properties of the proposed collective incentive model to identify the analytical solutions and performance. Analytical results indicate that there exists a threshold demand elasticity below which the total surplus of commuters with and without transit passes can be improved simultaneously. Properties also show that there could exist multiple local optimal solutions of incentive strategy duration for a given starting time. A case study is conducted with the metro system in Toronto: the results show that the proposed collective incentive strategy could improve both the fare revenues and ridership by 33.31 % and 83.56 %, respectively.

Keywords: Collective incentive strategy; Urban rail transit; Passenger departure time; Bi-level optimization model; Policy design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096585642400079X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:transa:v:182:y:2024:i:c:s096585642400079x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2024.104031

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice is currently edited by John (J.M.) Rose

More articles in Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().