铁路货运价格策略研究

运价是客户选择运输方式的重要因素。铁路货物运价存在着运价政策、运价管理机制与市场脱节等问题。应用铁路货运价格理论,借鉴美国铁路运价策略,提出我国铁路货运价格应实施以国家统一运价为基础,运输企业根据市场供求关系,掌握一定的运价浮动权,并实行多种形式的运输价格等策略。     

Analysis of the potential demand for battery electric vehicle sharing: Mode share and spatiotemporal distribution

Carsharing is considered one of the solutions to urban transport problems. As a new mode in the urban transport system in China, there are still initial questions of how carsharing will perform and what the impacts will be. Accordingly, this study considers battery electric vehicle sharing and investigates its potential demand, with Beijing as the case study. A nested logit model is established and calibrated to analyze mode choice behavior. Further, real trip data is used to estimate the potential demand for battery electric vehicle sharing. In addition, the temporal and spatial distribution of potential demand, the impact of battery electric vehicle sharing on the mode split, and the impact of pricing strategies are analyzed. The results show that an optimistic mode split of battery electric vehicle sharing is 4.23% when the average distance between travelers and stations is 0.5 km. The main source of potential demand is public transport. However, the substitution effect of battery electric vehicle sharing for private vehicles is weak. The potential trips are concentrated in the morning peak period, mainly starting in residential or integrative areas, and ending in commercial areas or green spaces. Commuting and long-distance trips are more sensitive to decreases in price, such that they are more likely to be completed as battery electric vehicle sharing trips. This price decrease could also increase the potential trip ratio during the evening peak period. These findings are useful to governments and operators for implementing policies such as station planning, relocation, and pricing strategies.     

The role of market research and consultation in developing parking policy

There is a demonstrable link between parking availability, price and mode choice, and parking policy has been shown to be a powerful demand management tool. Parking however is clearly an area of policy conflict since using it to manage demand may reduce revenue generation, or (be perceived to) damage the local economy. In terms of on-street and off-street parking there are a wide range of users who often have conflicting opinions, which have to be taken into account in its management, invariably leading to parking policies and measures that do not maximise the demand management potential of parking.This paper presents a range of public and business opinion data, from the case study of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, collected as part of the consultation for its parking strategy in 2005–2006. The strategy covers a wider geographical area than simply the city centre, and whilst this paper makes reference to this wider area it primarily deals with the city centre since that is where the majority of the parking strategy issues are to be found. After setting the policy and political context, the paper goes on to present these data. It then shows how the city's parking policies were changed in response to the consultation. These policy changes are compared with parking policies that would solely manage travel demand, to demonstrate how the political process leads to compromise in the formulation of parking policies and measures.     

关于我国铁路运价问题的思考

针对我国铁路运价长期以来实行统一运价,且水平偏低、形式单一,不能真实反映市场供求关系的现状,提出改革铁路运价管理体制,形成多元化的运价运行机制和运价与物价联动机制,以及实行国家定价、政府指导价、浮动运价、区域运价、协议运价和优惠运价等灵活多样的运价体系,以增强铁路运输企业的竞争力,实现铁路的可持续发展。     

The evidence base for parking policies—a review

Parking policy is one of the key links between transport and land-use policy. Parking policies are often compromised in their effectiveness due to the perceived tension between three of the objectives that parking supports: regeneration, restraint and revenue. In particular the belief that parking restraint measures could damage the attractiveness of city centres to both retail and commercial enterprises limits the political acceptability of pricing policies and planning.This paper presents a review of the evidence base upon which commuter, leisure and shopping and residential parking policies are based. Whilst underdeveloped, the literature suggests that greater attention should be given to analysing and presenting the accessibility impacts that different parking restraint measures have on travelers of all modes. The research base in many instances does not support, or provides evidence counter to, the assumption that parking restraint makes centres less attractive. Further disaggregate work is needed to understand how context specific these findings might be.     

Temporal variance of revealed preference on-street parking price elasticity

This paper utilises revealed-preference parking trend data from parking meters ex ante and ex post of a general 50% price increase in the hourly cost of on-street parking to estimate the on-street parking price elasticity of demand in an area of Dublin, Ireland. Estimates are presented for the aggregate price elasticity of demand level and individual estimates for specific time periods and days of the week. In terms of reduced parking frequency, the average price elasticity of demand reported is −0.29. Daily average estimates are consistent, with one notable exception being Thursday, a ‘late night shopping’ day for which a lower price sensitivity is reported. Morning periods are also shown to be more responsive than other time periods in the test area, indicating some potential for influencing morning inbound peak traffic levels.     

On the fairness of airlines’ ticket pricing as a result of revenue management techniques

Pricing and availability of tickets have always been a source of confusion for customers in transportation industries. What is the best time to buy tickets? Why passengers taking the same flight might pay significantly different prices for the same seat? Why round trip tickets between two cities sometimes become cheaper than the one-way flights between them? Is it fair to buy a ticket for an itinerary cheaper than a ticket for just a part of it? These observations make customers wonder why they pay higher prices for shorter flights. In this paper, we study the airlines’ revenue management systems and explain some of these pricing schemes in travel industries. We develop a simulator to study the decision making process of network revenue management and use a numerical study to explore these questions and address some explanations for them. We relate these observations to the revenue management measurements such as the bid price or the adjustment cost and show how the dynamic of the network get influenced by these measures that eventually results in unusual pricing. We explain how a zero or small bid price of a specific leg may cause the price of an itinerary be cheaper than one segment of it and that the small bid price is caused by low demand in comparison to the available capacity. We exhibit network revenue management system and show the above issues for a small network.     

Estimating welfare changes from efficient pricing in public bus transit in India

Three different and feasible pricing strategies for public bus transport in India are developed in a partial equilibrium framework with the objective of improving economic efficiency and ensuring revenue adequacy, namely average cost pricing, marginal cost pricing, and two-part tariffs. These are assessed not only in terms of gains in economic efficiency, but also in changes in travel demand and consumer surplus. The estimated partial equilibrium price is higher in all three pricing regimes when compared to the current price. As a result, consumer surplus falls in all three cases. The price increase is much larger with average cost pricing compared to marginal cost pricing or two-part tariffs, and hence a larger fall in demand and consumer surplus occurs due to average cost pricing. While there is a gain in economic efficiency from marginal cost pricing and two-part tariffs, this improvement comes at the expense of reduced public bus transit demand and consumer surplus, given the price inelastic public bus transit demand estimated for India. Given the mobility needs and the developmental concerns of a growing economy such as India, the challenge for policy makers is to balance the gains in economic efficiency in the public bus transit sector against other social, political, and developmental goals.     

Demand for cargo airships: An analysis of mode choice decision making in the freight transport industry

Despite their potential, cargo airships currently remain a theoretical concept. This research aims to examine the factors determining the demand for their services from the perspective of transport logistics professionals. An online freight mode choice experiment is conducted, supplemented with follow-up semi-structured interviews. Across freight types the sensitivity of the modes (road, rail, sea and airship) to the attributes (price, time, reliability and frequency) varied substantially. Willingness to pay for the cargo airship mode for travel time saved is estimated to be $23/tonne/hour. It is conservatively estimated that the potential market share of cargo airships in the Australian domestic freight market varies across airship models with LMH-1 having the lowest market share of 8% while ARH50 has the largest potential market share at 25%.     

Effects of parking and cordon charge policies on tourist's modal shift in central business district of Mashhad city,Iran

The second largest holy city of the world, Mashhad, attracts high volumes of tourists and pilgrims every year. Most visitors travel by private car and are a source of considerable funds for the local economy. Among road users, tourists as one of the major traveller categories in Mashhad city behave differently due to the particular trip purpose. The aim of this research is to model tourist's shifting modes of travel behaviour when policy measures, such as the parking and cordon fares, are implemented. The tourists’ preferences were examined using binary logit analysis when different options of travel cost and time scenarios were provided. Results indicate that travel time, parking cost, cordon cost, education level and vehicle price influence tourist's modal choice. In addition, the finding shows that congestion pricing will be more effective than a parking pricing strategy in encouraging switching of modes.     

The impact of carbon emission fees on passenger demand and air fares: A game theoretic approach

The implementation of an environmental market-based measure on U.S. aviation industry is studied. Under this policy, each airline pays a carbon fee for the carbon dioxide emissions it generates. The impact on ticket prices and corresponding market shares is investigated via the joint estimation of an air travel demand model and an airlines' behavior model. In the demand model, aggregate air traffic data is used to determine the marginal effects of flight attributes that are specific to itinerary, airline and airport on market share. The airline's behavior model incorporates the carbon fee in the airline marginal cost. After the implementation of the carbon policy, the increased cost forces airlines to adjust ticket prices in order to maximize profits. The results obtained by the proposed model indicate a moderate price increase which strongly depends on the per tonne carbon price. Air travel demand falls from 2.4% to 21% depending on the carbon price level.     

铁路集装箱运价策略研究

在市场经济环境下,运输价格是客户选择运输方式的重要因素,但目前我国铁路集装箱运输在运价方面还存在一些问题。通过分析铁路集装箱运输的特殊性,并将其运价划分为3类,提出对不同附加值的货物采用不同的运输费率、实行折扣运价和合理确定运行基价等建议,并建立了铁路集装箱最优运价模型。     

竞争性综合运输中公路货运定价的研究

利用双层优化方法,将公路货运企业的经营目标函数和客户的选择函数统一考虑,分析了在客户选择最优基础上的公路货运定价问题,通过构建模型,求解得到货运价格。该价格是满足消费者福利剩余最大化的价格,有利于社会资源的优化配置和公路货运企业、综合运输市场的发展。     

Car-sharing organizations: The size of the market segment and revealed change in mobility behavior

Car-sharing organizations (CSO) have recently spread throughout central European cities and currently have 20000 members. They lower individual fixed costs of car availability change the incentive structure of private vehicle use by transforming nearly all costs into variable costs. A survey of all current Austrian CSO members is used to identify the characteristics significant of members. A procedure is proposed to quantify urban local market segment potentials and is applied to two residential areas. The net impact of CSOs depends on how the new incentive structure changes mobility behavior. A controlled experiment of voluntary new members was carried out to compare pre-membership and membership trip structure and modal split. Results indicate a substantial reduction of aggregate private vehicle mileage. While the share of trips by car is constant, changes in trip length are observed, with there being different changes for households which previously owned a car and those which did not. Combining behavior impact with market segment size results in the quantification of emission reduction and car ownership reduction (land use demand) due to car-sharing, which is a decentralized demand-side transport policy.     

Is there a case for replacing parking charges by road user charges?

The price of parking is often considered an important tool with which to influence transport choice but, since many local authorities have limited control over off-street charges and since parking charges have no direct impact on through traffic, its influence on overall travel demand may be limited. Road user charges, on the other hand, do appear to offer an effective means of influencing overall demand. The problem is that public acceptance of such charges is low unless some obvious “carrot” can be identified. This paper explores the possibility that the removal of parking charges might be that “carrot”. Our analysis suggests that, although the removal of parking charges would reduce revenues and dilute the reduction in demand caused by the introduction of road charges, the combined effect might, in certain circumstances, be more beneficial to the local economy and might still yield a net increase in revenue. Given the incidence of impacts, it also appears that a combined scheme would be more equitable and might stand a greater chance of achieving public acceptance than a more conventional road charging scheme. The paper identifies the circumstances in which a combined scheme might work well and outlines the detailed analysis that would be necessary to confirm this.     

Congestion pricing,transit subsidies and dedicated bus lanes: Efficient and practical solutions to congestion

We analyze urban congestion management policies through numerical analysis of a simple model that: allows users to choose between car, bus or an outside option (biking); consider congestion interactions between cars and buses; and allow for optimization of frequency, vehicle size, spacing between stops and percentage of capacity to be dedicated to bus lanes. We compare resulting service levels, social welfare and consumer surplus for a number of different policies and find that: (i) dedicated bus lanes is a better stand-alone policy than transit subsidization or congestion pricing. The latter is marginally better than subsidization but has a negative impact in consumer surplus. (ii) Efficient transit subsidies are quite large since in many cases first-best transit price is negative; establishing dedicated bus lanes or implementing congestion pricing render subsidies unnecessary for high demand levels. (iii) Both subsidization and dedicated bus lanes would count with public support while congestion pricing would probably encounter opposition. (iv) Transit subsidies and/or congestion pricing do not induce large changes on optimal bus size, frequency, circulation speeds and spacing between stops in mixed-traffic conditions: dedicated bus lanes do. (v) In all cases analyzed, revenues from congestion pricing are enough to cover transit subsidies; the optimal percentage of capacity that should be devoted for bus traffic is around one third.     

The use of response surfaces in specifying transport strategies

Integrated transport strategies can involve a wide range of measures, each varying in the intensity with which it is applied. Objective functions can be specified to reflect public policy objectives, and their value will change as changes are made in the measures included and their intensity, generating a response surface. This process has been used in earlier research to identify the optimum combination of measures for a given objective function. In this paper the data generated is used to explore the shape of the response surface around the optimum as individual policy measures are varied in intensity. Results are presented for three cities, using different models. They indicate particular sensitivity to changes in pricing and service frequency, and greater sensitivity for economic objective functions than those which include environmental attributes. Performance is particularly sensitive when public transport is deregulated. Changes in objective function also lead to marked changes in the optimum values for pricing measures. Road pricing performance is very sensitive to the definition of the charging method. Response surfaces have been shown to be particularly useful in indicating sensitivity to a given policy instrument; in determining the loss of benefit if a sub-optimal level is required; and in assessing robustness of strategies against changes in objectives.     

Transport accounts—methodological concepts and empirical results

Although economic theory suggests social marginal cost pricing as the optimal pricing principle for transport infrastructure charging, information on the total (or average) social costs of transport and on the revenues from taxes and charges are important for pricing policy, for example for monitoring purposes and for the design of second-best prices. This paper provides empirical evidence on the total social costs and revenues for road, rail and air transport, covering all EU countries and Switzerland. It discusses methodologies to estimate the social costs of transport for all modes, focussing on practical experience with applying advanced methodological approaches both in the light of data quality and availability, and regarding the feasibility of conducting this type of research on a routine basis for transport policy.     

A multilayer model to simulate cruising for parking in urban areas

In this paper we propose an assignment model on urban networks to simulate parking choices; this model is able to simulate the impact of cruising for parking on traffic congestion. For simulating parking choice and estimating the impact of cruising on road congestion we propose a multi-layer network supply model, where each layer simulates a trip phase (on-car trip between the origin and destination zone, cruising for parking at destination zone and walking egress trip). In this model the cruising time is explicitly simulated on the network. The proposed model is tested on a trial network and on a real-scale network; numerical tests highlighted that the proposed model is able to simulate user parking choice behaviour and the impact of cruising for parking upon road congestion, particularly when the average parking saturation degrees exceed 0.7.