Bimodal transit design with heterogeneous demand elasticity under different fare structures

Abstract

The study develops a new optimisation model to design a bimodal transit system from a microeconomic view to maximise the profit of a transit agency considering heterogeneous demand elasticity and different fare structures. Bimodal transit network parameters are optimized to better serve passenger demand. An elastic demand function is devised to include various time components and incorporate flat, distance-based, and hybrid fares. A nested iterative procedure is developed to find a near-optimal solution. Numerical experiments reveal the following interesting findings. First, the increase in elasticity parameters has a knock-on effect on the financial performance, consequently leading to a net profit reduction. Second, a distance-based fare scheme brings in the least actual demand but makes the most profit, compared with the flat and hybrid fare schemes. Third, passengers prefer using a rail-bus system to a BRT-bus system, especially at a higher demand level.

KEYWORDS:

• Public transit
• bimodal transit
• demand elasticity
• profit maximisation
• transit fare

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Eric Jiang from Vandegrift High School for assisting with some experimental data processing. The authors would like to thank the editorial team and the anonymous referees for their constructive comments throughout the review process, which helped improve the quality of the manuscript significantly.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 72271206, No. 72271207), Chunhui Cooperative Research Project of the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (No. CH2019lt), and the Science and Technology Department of Sichuan Province (No. 2021YJ0536).