{"title":"To increase or to decrease the price? Managing public transport queues during COVID-19 in the presence of strategic commuters.","authors":"S Srivatsa Srinivas","doi":"10.1007/s12469-022-00314-3","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The impact of COVID-19 on urban travel behavior has been unprecedented. It has significantly influenced the travel mode choices of different urban commuters in various countries across the globe. Given that the public transport providers need to tradeoff between minimizing the spread of COVID-19 and providing an affordable travel choice in this environment, we develop a strategic queueing model to analyze the effect of different pricing strategies on the commuter behavior. In particular, we consider a Markovian queue in front of a public transport ticket counter wherein strategic commuters arrive at the service facility and make joining or balking decisions based on their derived utilities. In contrast to conventional wisdom, we suggest that the public transport provider needs to decrease the price to filter out the wealthy commuters who possess feasible alternative travel options from using public transport and promote the commuters with no alternatives in using public transport.</p>","PeriodicalId":327,"journal":{"name":"Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta","volume":"53 1","pages":"275-285"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10013299/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta","FirstCategoryId":"5","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12469-022-00314-3","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2023/3/14 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"GEOCHEMISTRY & GEOPHYSICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The impact of COVID-19 on urban travel behavior has been unprecedented. It has significantly influenced the travel mode choices of different urban commuters in various countries across the globe. Given that the public transport providers need to tradeoff between minimizing the spread of COVID-19 and providing an affordable travel choice in this environment, we develop a strategic queueing model to analyze the effect of different pricing strategies on the commuter behavior. In particular, we consider a Markovian queue in front of a public transport ticket counter wherein strategic commuters arrive at the service facility and make joining or balking decisions based on their derived utilities. In contrast to conventional wisdom, we suggest that the public transport provider needs to decrease the price to filter out the wealthy commuters who possess feasible alternative travel options from using public transport and promote the commuters with no alternatives in using public transport.
期刊介绍:
Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta publishes research papers in a wide range of subjects in terrestrial geochemistry, meteoritics, and planetary geochemistry. The scope of the journal includes:
1). Physical chemistry of gases, aqueous solutions, glasses, and crystalline solids
2). Igneous and metamorphic petrology
3). Chemical processes in the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere of the Earth
4). Organic geochemistry
5). Isotope geochemistry
6). Meteoritics and meteorite impacts
7). Lunar science; and
8). Planetary geochemistry.