Evolving passenger priorities in seat ticket purchases: a novel ticketing strategy for railway passenger transportation

The reasonable and efficient utilization of train seats is crucial for optimizing the benefits of railways in medium- to long-distance passenger transportation, enhancing service quality compared to road and air travel. To achieve this, the study introduces a novel ticketing strategy, including: (1) Assigning priority levels based on a normalized fuzzy evaluation of passenger travel fatigue, with longer journeys receiving higher priority and longer presale periods; (2) Implementing a stepwise reduction of priorities over time to mitigate the adverse impact of assigning higher priority to long-distance passengers on the seat ticket purchases of short-distance passengers; (3) Elevating priority for short-distance passengers and enabling seat reuse when a long-distance passenger secures a seat ticket without reaching the maximum travel range corresponding to the current highest priority, ensuring early purchases for short-distance passengers; (4) Managing seat ticket presales through a seat reuse priority grouping to preserve, as much as possible, seat numbers with lower reuse depth or unsold seat numbers and maximize availability for long-distance passengers. Simulation results indicate the proposed ticketing strategy significantly enhances train seat utilization and optimizes railway efficiency for medium- to long-distance passenger transportation, while effectively balancing the ticket purchasing rights of short-distance passengers, thereby improving overall service quality.