Demand Calculations

[StephenM]

I've come up with a first round of demand calculations based on city sizes in Ireland. Its got a different main assumption to Airline Mogul where if you are going from one large city to a small one demand is huge whereas demand between 2 small cities is small. In this game you can see that it appears different and the greatest demand comes from cities in the "mid" population range. Which brings me to the final point, demand is based on population not passenger numbers.

Tell me what you think, still lots to do with variables such as time of day, day of week and time of the year! This is only ment to be a basic format from which to apply the other variables.

http://www.stephenm.org/StephenM/demand_calc_1.pdf

Table:
[list=1]

• Summed Population (SQRT'ed)
• Preference (Based on population)
• Demand Value (a)
• Demand Value (b)
• Demand Difference (a-b)[/list:o]

[madox]

Alright, well, I've read over your "demand for rail transport" post and .pdf several times, and I actually have a few questions (in no particular order):

1) Why would you assume that the percentage of people that take a train is a square-root of the population?

2) For your "Preference (Based on population)", why would you divide the square-roots?  For Cork to Dublin you have 345/711 = 0.49, but for Dublin to Cork you also have .49; which, by your own function, would be wrong.  Dublin to Cork would be 711/345 = 2.06.  Therefore, I'm curious as to the reasoning behind this.

3) The "Demand Value (b)" calculations need to shown as to how you derived them.

4) In the "Demand Difference (a-b)", you have negative demand, which doesn't make any sense.  Does that mean that people are willing to pay more money to not travel by rail?

Anyway, I have my own theory as towards a railway demand function, but I'd by more than willing to modify it after I read your reply for my questions.

Thanks.