The greening of intercity travel: Environmental protection subsidy and HSR operation planning

Abstract The transportation sector is one of the highest sectors responsible for negative environmental impacts in the cities. It is necessary for the government to inspire the local transportation system to reduce its pollution emissions. Therefore, this article uses the environmental protection subsidy (EPS) to attract passengers to choose green travel. In order to obtain the optimal solution for green transportation, we propose a bi-level multi-objective optimization model based on the collaborative optimization between EPS coefficient and high-speed rail (HSR) operation planning. There are three main game players, namely the government, HSR enterprise, and passengers. We develop a hybrid optimization algorithm to solve the model and verify this proposed methodology by using the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei intercity transportation network. Our results show that the EPS has a significant impact on intercity travel. As demand increases, the EPS coefficient gradually decreases from 0.85 to 0. HSR's profit growth is higher than the government subsidies.