An SMDP-Based Optimization Model for Railway Passenger Ticketing

Although the Passenger Railway has developed rapidly, the ticketing is still on a first come, first served basis. Gradually, the authors find it always induced the seats unoccupied and reduced the system rewards because of the halfway-station requests. This paper presents the Railway Passenger Ticketing Optimization Model based on Semi-Markov Decision Process (SMDP) to increase the system rewards. Especially, the authors propose “the seats risk-rewards” to indicate the system value at risk by different ticketing decisions. Furthermore, this study provides not only the optimal strategy of the seats utilization, but also the system maximum long-term rewards.