A Game Theory Approach for the Operators’ Behavior Analysis in the Urban Passenger Transportation Market

Abstract:

Urban passenger transportation market in China now is composed by three public transportation modes, including the conventional bus, taxi and the subway (or light rail). There are both cooperation and competitive behavior existing among these three different transportation modes. This paper aims to describe how these three operators make their operational decisions in the competitive environment. A bi-level programming operational model is proposed to model urban passenger transportation operators’ decision behavior, which is based on the game theory to describe the behavioral conjectures among the management authority, different operators and passengers. The upper-level model described the management authority’ regulation on the fares of each mode, which aimed to achieve the comprehensive social objectives, indexed by the travel time cost, air pollution cost and energy consumption cost. The lower-level model described the three operators’ aiming to maximize the profit by determining the service frequency, which can reflect the operators’ cooperation and completive behavior under urban passenger transportation economic policy. A Logit model is proposed to analyze passengers’ mode choice behavior with the maximization of their travel utilities, which considers the total travel time, waiting time and total travel fare of each mode. This research will provide more evidence for urban passenger transportation development and contribute to urban passenger transportation economic policy establishment and implementation.

• Periodical: Advanced Engineering Forum (Volume 5)
• Pages: 38-43
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AEF.5.38
• Online since: July 2012
• Authors: Xiao Wei Hu, Jian Wang, Guang Lin Sun
• Keywords: Bi-Level Programming, Game Theory, Nash Equilibrium, Urban Passenger Transportation Market

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