IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tin/wpaper/20070007.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Second Best Decision Making of Railway Operators: How to fix Fares, Frequency and Vehicle Size

Author

Listed:
  • Piet Rietveld

    (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

  • Stefan van Woudenberg

    (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

Abstract

Railway networks are characterised by variations in demand on different links. Optimal strategies therefore call for a differentiated treatment of fares, frequencies and vehicle sizes in various links. However, for several reasons, railway operators may apply uniform levels for these decision variables. In this paper we investigate the welfare losses implied by uniform setting of fares per km, frequencies or vehicle sizes. This is done within the context of a model with uniform cost structures, uniform price elasticities, uniform demand levels across the day, but with demand levels that vary across segments of the network. We demonstrate that the largest welfare loss results when frequencies are made uniform across links. Welfare losses due to making vehicle size and price per km uniform across links are smaller. We further find that when capacity, represented by frequency and vehicle size, is set at its optimal level at the various network segments, the contribution of price differentiation to social welfare is very limited. These results suggest that where differentiated prices are important to address issues like congestion and directional asymmetries in demand, differentiated supply in terms of vehicle size and in particular frequences are the preferred way of addressing demand variations on different segments in a network.

Suggested Citation

  • Piet Rietveld & Stefan van Woudenberg, 2007. "Second Best Decision Making of Railway Operators: How to fix Fares, Frequency and Vehicle Size," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 07-007/3, Tinbergen Institute.
  • Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20070007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/07007.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Piet Rietveld & Roberto Roson, 2002. "Direction dependent prices in public transport: A good idea? The back haul pricing problem for a monopolistic public transport firm," Transportation, Springer, vol. 29(4), pages 397-417, November.
    2. Douglas W. Caves & Laurits R. Christensen & Joseph A. Swanson, 1980. "Productivity in U.S. Railroads, 1951-1974," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 11(1), pages 166-181, Spring.
    3. Erik T. Verhoef & Jan Rouwendal, 2004. "Pricing, Capacity Choice, and Financing in Transportation Networks," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(3), pages 405-435, August.
    4. Emile Quinet & Roger Vickerman, 2004. "Principles of Transport Economics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2581.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hörcher, Daniel & Tirachini, Alejandro, 2021. "A review of public transport economics," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 25(C).
    2. Wenliang Zhou & Ziyu Zou & Naijie Chai & Guangming Xu, 2023. "Optimization of Differential Pricing and Seat Allocation in High-Speed Railways for Multi-Class Demands: A Chinese Case Study," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-17, March.
    3. Hörcher, Daniel & Graham, Daniel J., 2020. "MaaS economics: Should we fight car ownership with subscriptions to alternative modes?," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 22(C).
    4. Daniel Hörcher & Daniel J. Graham, 2021. "The Gini index of demand imbalances in public transport," Transportation, Springer, vol. 48(5), pages 2521-2544, October.
    5. Hörcher, Daniel & Graham, Daniel J., 2018. "Demand imbalances and multi-period public transport supply," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 106-126.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. De Borger, Bruno & Mayeres, Inge, 2007. "Optimal taxation of car ownership, car use and public transport: Insights derived from a discrete choice numerical optimization model," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(5), pages 1177-1204, July.
    2. Simon P. Anderson & Régis Renault, 2011. "Price Discrimination," Chapters, in: André de Palma & Robin Lindsey & Emile Quinet & Roger Vickerman (ed.), A Handbook of Transport Economics, chapter 22, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Preston, John, 2008. "Competition in transit markets," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 75-84, January.
    4. Marc Gaudry & Emile Quinet, 2015. "Correlation within SNCF administrative regions among track segment maintenance cost equation residuals of a country-wide model," Working Papers halshs-01112249, HAL.
    5. Konstantina Gkritza & Kumares Sinha & Samuel Labi & Fred Mannering, 2008. "Influence of highway construction projects on economic development: an empirical assessment," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 42(3), pages 545-563, September.
    6. Marc Gaudry & Emile Quinet, 2016. "Box-Cox transformations of terms nesting the Trans-Log: the example of rail infrastructure maintenance cost," Working Papers halshs-01261980, HAL.
    7. Bernard Lapeyre & Emile Quinet, 2017. "A Simple GDP-based Model for Public Investments at Risk," Post-Print hal-01666574, HAL.
    8. Schwarz, Gregor & Bichler, Martin, 2022. "How to trade thirty thousand products: A wholesale market design for road capacity," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 167-185.
    9. Lovell, Knox, 2001. "Future Research Opportunities in Efficiency and Productivity Analysis," Efficiency Series Papers 2001/01, University of Oviedo, Department of Economics, Oviedo Efficiency Group (OEG).
    10. Bruno de Borger & Stef Proost, 2004. "Vertical and horizontal tax competition in the transport sector," Reflets et perspectives de la vie économique, De Boeck Université, vol. 0(4), pages 45-64.
    11. Hörcher, Daniel & Graham, Daniel J., 2018. "Demand imbalances and multi-period public transport supply," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 106-126.
    12. Jiang, Changmin & Zhang, Anming, 2014. "Effects of high-speed rail and airline cooperation under hub airport capacity constraint," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 33-49.
    13. D’Alfonso, Tiziana & Jiang, Changmin & Bracaglia, Valentina, 2015. "Would competition between air transport and high-speed rail benefit environment and social welfare?," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 118-137.
    14. André De Palma & Fay Dunkerley & Stef Proost, 2005. "Asymmetric Duopoly in Space - what policies work?," ERSA conference papers ersa05p494, European Regional Science Association.
    15. Seedah, Dan & Harrison, Robert, 2010. "Measuring the Impact of Intermodal Rail Movements in State Transportation Planning," 51st Annual Transportation Research Forum, Arlington, Virginia, March 11-13, 2010 207257, Transportation Research Forum.
    16. Malcolm Abbott, 2018. "Productivity: a history of its measurement," HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND POLICY, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2018(1), pages 57-80.
    17. Quaglione, Davide & Cassetta, Ernesto & Crociata, Alessandro & Marra, Alessandro & Sarra, Alessandro, 2019. "An assessment of the role of cultural capital on sustainable mobility behaviours: Conceptual framework and empirical evidence," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 24-34.
    18. DE BORGER, Bruno & MAYERES, Inge, "undated". "Taxation of car-ownership, car use and public transport: Insight derived from a discrete choice numerical optimisation model," Working Papers 2004021, University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    19. Finger, Matthias, 2014. "Governance of competition and performance in European railways: An analysis of five cases," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 278-288.
    20. Emmanuel, Bougna Tchofo & Crozet, Yves, 2014. "Beyond the “bundling vs unbundling” controversy: What is at stake for the French railway?," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 393-400.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Railways; fares; second best; frequency; vehicle size; demand variations;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R4 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20070007. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tinbenl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.