关键词: 铁路运输, 多目标定价, Epsilon约束法, 高铁客票, 双层规划模型, 帕累托边界

Abstract:

High-speed rail (HSR) ticket pricing is a multi-objective pricing problem. It not only ensures passenger welfare, but also increases the operator's reasonable profits. Considering passenger differences and multimode competition in different lengths of haul, this paper took profit and passenger welfare as HSR's objectives and discussed the optimal HSR ticket pricing solutions. It built a bi-level programming model combining with the epsilon-constraint method, extracted the multi-objective problems according to lexicographic techniques and designed a relaxation algorithm to derive the Nash equilibrium. Corresponding target values are used to plot the Pareto frontier and optimal pricing was determined. The results from computational experiments show the following findings: First, multi- objective solutions are more suitable for pricing reform because of their smaller fluctuation in price and quantity of passengers and improvements of performance; Second, short-haul tickets and time-sensitive passenger tickets are likely to increase even higher; Third, the competition of multi-mode transportation affects pricing implementation. The innovation is to apply the epsilon-constraint method to solve the multi-objective HSR ticket pricing. The proposed pricing method helps to optimize the interests of operators and passengers and provides thoughts for HSR ticket pricing for railway operator.

Key words: railway transportation, multi-objective pricing, Epsilon-constraint method, high-speed railway passenger fares, bi-level programming model, Pareto frontier