Conclusions (ctd)
A bid price methodology effectively addresses many of the common core requirements of railroad applications:
- A bid price method easily handles network problems using a simple control mechanism: based on legs traversed, if the sum of the bid prices is less than the revenue, the booking request should be accepted, otherwise it should be rejected.
- A bid price system can readily accomodate any kind of booking arrival pattern, as opposed to an EMSR-based system which tends to “overprotect” space for the higher value fare classes.
- Updating the bid prices frequently eliminates the need for any nesting assumptions, and allows the application to cope with extremely short booking curves, and high cancellation/rebooking rates.
- A “safety net” function using “triggers” (Phillips [1994b]) or other similar control mechanism can be used to detect when a multiple group booking request should be flagged for manual intervention or other special handling in the system -- including the consideration of whether additional train capacity ought to be provided.