Willingness to Pay for Proposed High Speed Railway in India: Are Conventional Train Travellers Ready to Pay Higher for Saved Travel Times and How Much?
High Speed Rail is said to be a revolutionary mode of transport as it brings down the inter-city journey times drastically. However, affordability of this time reduction is still questionable, which makes the calculations of willingness to pay (WTP) for HSR essential. This study analyzes WTP of conventional train travelers for reduced travel time due to proposed HSR. A questionnaire based survey of train travelers was conducted in Mumbai, India. The questionnaire mainly covered the details of their current travel, socio-economic status and WTP related questions. A modified open-ended contingent valuation method was used for data collection and modeling was done using binary logistic regression. Differential utility weighted mean WTP was calculated for multiple socio-economic cohorts. It was found that travelers are willing to pay average INR 300 (1 USD is about 75 INR) over their current travel cost for an hour of travel time saving and INR 3.25 to 5.25/km is the ideal fare range travelers are willing to pay. Analysis showed that WTP decreases with the existence of co-passenger, with the comfort of sleeper coaches while it increases with the increasing income. WTP is higher for middle age group, medium frequent travelers and for those on business trips. This study found the need for group ticket discount of 10% and average 25% subsidy on monthly passes in order to make HSR more attractive for larger group of travelers. This research would be useful for various policy level decisions and for ridership forecast for different fare levels.
- Record URL:
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP030 Standing Committee on Public Transportation Marketing and Fare Policy.
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Corporate Authors:
Transportation Research Board
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Authors:
- Karmarkar, Omkar Deepak
- Jana, Arnab
- Velaga, Nagendra Rao
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 100th Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC, United States
- Date: 2021-1-5 to 2021-1-29
- Date: 2021
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Costs; Fares; High speed rail; Passengers; Subsidies; Travel time; Value of time
- Geographic Terms: India; Mumbai (India)
- Subject Areas: Finance; Operations and Traffic Management; Passenger Transportation; Planning and Forecasting; Railroads;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01763987
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: TRBAM-21-02106
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Feb 4 2021 10:57AM