Campbell, K. C., “Booking and Revenue Management for Rail Intermodal Services” [1996]
Assumes three distinct classes of service: Premium, Standard and Unplanned, each having a different price and transit time
When a customer calls to reserve train space, they must identify the shipment origin, destination and preferred shipping class. The carrier responds by either accepting the booking request as is, offering an upgrade, offering a downgrade, or rejecting the request altogether.
Periodically the carrier must solve an allocation problem to determine capacity levels for each origin destination pair. Required inputs include train schedules, costs and prices, a demand forecast, and capacity constraints.
Booking control mechanism is primarily based on origin destination market sales limits and inhibitors, similar to Amtrak’s revenue management approach.
The performance of various “origin destination EMSR” based decision rules is assessed using a rolling horizon simulation model.