Title: A logarithmic goal programming approach to develop the utility function for a railway travel

Authors: Goutam Dutta; Priyanko Ghosh; Arushi Wanchoo Kaul

Addresses: Production and Quantitative Methods Area, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad 380015, India ' Tata Consultancy Services, # 42(P) & 45(P), Think Campus, Electronic City, Phase II, Bangalore 560 100, India ' Symbiotics S.A., Geneva 1204, Switzerland

Abstract: Railway passengers are in a dilemma to choose the best train among several alternatives available in a particular route. A relative comparison of competing railways helps the passenger to make an informed choice before the actual travel. In this paper we develop a utility model for a railway travel based on the important attributes. We carry out an analysis on the competing railways for a particular route and calculate the utility score of each train route. The passengers benefit as they are aware of the relative ranking of a particular train on a particular route before they make their choice and the railways benefit as they are able to estimate the market share of each service using a multinomial logit choice model.

Keywords: forecasting; revenue management; utility function; choice models; logarithm goal programming; modelling; rail travel; railway passengers; train routes; route choice; route options; India; railways; passenger choice; route selection.

DOI: 10.1504/IJRM.2015.070001

International Journal of Revenue Management, 2015 Vol.8 No.2, pp.153 - 164

Received: 26 Aug 2014
Accepted: 10 Sep 2014
Published online: 22 Jun 2015 *

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