Decision and control model for promoting public transit via lottery incentives

This paper reports on a decision model that highlights a reward-based promotional strategy for a bus organization to maintain its market. The market control law is obtained from an optimal solution in the system equations on the basis of the relationship among the transit operator, ticket agent, and government. The paper presents a case study for the Taipei bus transit system. Results from this research confirm the effectiveness of the proposed strategy for bus operators as well as for traffic improvement. The proposed model reveals the optimal actions for the agent and bus operators under governmental policy.