Game-Based Competition Models between Bus Routes
Publication: Journal of Urban Planning and Development
Volume 142, Issue 3
Abstract
Competition behavior normally plays a role in bus network operations. As an example, transport operators can use overlapping routes to compete for passengers in order to maximize their profits, but they may employ insufficient efforts to analyze this behavior. In this paper, an operating profit–optimization model is first formulated for a single bus route to illustrate that competition between bus routes is important in bus networks. Then, taking bus headway as decision variable, perfect-competition and imperfect-competition models are formulated for two bus routes to maximize every route’s operating profit. Finally, the two competition models are used to conduct numerical case studies, in which increasing laws of operating profit are founded for each route in competition with the changing headway and departure strategy choices of two bus routes are analyzed using game theory and decision theory. The competition models proposed in this paper can be employed by public transport operators to generate optimal bus headways, and they also confirm theoretically that competition is helpful in improving bus service efficiency.
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Acknowledgments
This research is supported by the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (No. 2014AA110304).
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© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 21, 2015
Accepted: Aug 25, 2015
Published online: Nov 4, 2015
Discussion open until: Apr 4, 2016
Published in print: Sep 1, 2016
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