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

Abstract

A railway passenger faces a dilemma of choosing 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 railway travel based on a few important attributes. We carry out an analysis on competing railways for a particular route and calculate the utility score of each railway. 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.