Reducing Subway Crowding: Analysis of an Off-Peak Discount Experiment in Hong Kong
Increases in ridership are outpacing capacity expansions in several transit systems. By shifting their focus to demand management, agencies can instead influence how customers use the system and get more out of their present capacity. This paper uses Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway (MTR) syste...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
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Transportation Research Board of the National Academies/SAGE Publications
2019
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/120164 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1929-7583 |
| _version_ | 1826211374828617728 |
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| author | Koutsopoulos, Haris N. Lau, Stephen Au, Tom Halvorsen, Anne Fire Zhao, Jinhua |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Koutsopoulos, Haris N. Lau, Stephen Au, Tom Halvorsen, Anne Fire Zhao, Jinhua |
| author_sort | Koutsopoulos, Haris N. |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Increases in ridership are outpacing capacity expansions in several transit systems. By shifting their focus to demand management, agencies can instead influence how customers use the system and get more out of their present capacity. This paper uses Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway (MTR) system as a case study to explore the effects of crowding reduction strategies and how to use fare data to support these measures. The MTR system introduced a discount in September 2014 to encourage users to travel before the peak and reduce onboard crowding. To understand the impacts of this intervention, first, existing congestion patterns were reviewed and a clustering analysis was used to reveal typical travel patterns among users. Then, changes to users' departure times were studied at three levels to evaluate the promotion's effects. Patterns of all users were measured across both the whole system and for specific rail segments. The travel patterns of the user groups, who have more homogeneous usage characteristics, were also evaluated and revealed groups who had differing responses to the promotion. The incentive was found to have affected morning travel, particularly at the beginning of the peak hour period and among users with commuter-like behavior. Aggregate and group-specific elasticities were developed to inform future promotions and the results were also used to suggest other potential incentive designs. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:04:53Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/120164 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:04:53Z |
| publishDate | 2019 |
| publisher | Transportation Research Board of the National Academies/SAGE Publications |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1201642022-09-29T12:34:48Z Reducing Subway Crowding: Analysis of an Off-Peak Discount Experiment in Hong Kong Koutsopoulos, Haris N. Lau, Stephen Au, Tom Halvorsen, Anne Fire Zhao, Jinhua Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning Halvorsen, Anne Fire Zhao, Jinhua Increases in ridership are outpacing capacity expansions in several transit systems. By shifting their focus to demand management, agencies can instead influence how customers use the system and get more out of their present capacity. This paper uses Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway (MTR) system as a case study to explore the effects of crowding reduction strategies and how to use fare data to support these measures. The MTR system introduced a discount in September 2014 to encourage users to travel before the peak and reduce onboard crowding. To understand the impacts of this intervention, first, existing congestion patterns were reviewed and a clustering analysis was used to reveal typical travel patterns among users. Then, changes to users' departure times were studied at three levels to evaluate the promotion's effects. Patterns of all users were measured across both the whole system and for specific rail segments. The travel patterns of the user groups, who have more homogeneous usage characteristics, were also evaluated and revealed groups who had differing responses to the promotion. The incentive was found to have affected morning travel, particularly at the beginning of the peak hour period and among users with commuter-like behavior. Aggregate and group-specific elasticities were developed to inform future promotions and the results were also used to suggest other potential incentive designs. 2019-02-04T14:49:57Z 2019-02-04T14:49:57Z 2016-01 2019-01-23T19:13:07Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0361-1981 2169-4052 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/120164 Halvorsen, Anne et al. “Reducing Subway Crowding: Analysis of an Off-Peak Discount Experiment in Hong Kong.” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 2544, 1 (January 2016): 38–46 © 2016 National Research Council https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1929-7583 http://dx.doi.org/10.3141/2544-05 Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Transportation Research Board of the National Academies/SAGE Publications Other repository |
| spellingShingle | Koutsopoulos, Haris N. Lau, Stephen Au, Tom Halvorsen, Anne Fire Zhao, Jinhua Reducing Subway Crowding: Analysis of an Off-Peak Discount Experiment in Hong Kong |
| title | Reducing Subway Crowding: Analysis of an Off-Peak Discount Experiment in Hong Kong |
| title_full | Reducing Subway Crowding: Analysis of an Off-Peak Discount Experiment in Hong Kong |
| title_fullStr | Reducing Subway Crowding: Analysis of an Off-Peak Discount Experiment in Hong Kong |
| title_full_unstemmed | Reducing Subway Crowding: Analysis of an Off-Peak Discount Experiment in Hong Kong |
| title_short | Reducing Subway Crowding: Analysis of an Off-Peak Discount Experiment in Hong Kong |
| title_sort | reducing subway crowding analysis of an off peak discount experiment in hong kong |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/120164 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1929-7583 |
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