The economics of crowding in rail transit

André de Palma (1, 2) , Robin Lindsey (3) , Guillaume Monchambert (4)

1 ENS Cachan - École normale supérieure - Cachan
2 Centre de Recherche en Économie et STatistique (CREST)
3 Sauder - Sauder School of Business [British Columbia]
4 LAET - Laboratoire Aménagement Économie Transports

We model trip-timing decisions of rail transit users who trade off crowding costs and disutility from traveling early or late. With no fare or a uniform fare, ridership is too concentrated on timely trains. Marginal-cost-pricing calls for time-dependent fares that smooth train loads and generate more revenue than an optimal uniform fare. The welfare gains from time-dependent fares are unlikely to increase as ridership grows. However, imposing time-dependent fares raises the benefits of expanding capacity by either adding trains or increasing train capacity. We illustrate these results by calibrating the model to the Paris RER A transit system.

Mots clés: Rail transit; Crowding; Pricing; Optimal capacity

Domaines: Economies et finances

André de Palma, Robin Lindsey, Guillaume Monchambert. The economics of crowding in rail transit. Journal of Urban Economics, 2017, 101, pp.106 - 122. ⟨10.1016/j.jue.2017.06.003⟩. ⟨halshs-01654975⟩