Abstract: In this paper,the benefits of passengers and transportation management departments are both considered and a bi-level programming model is presented in order to seek the optimal passenger-ticket price under the competition between different inter-city traffic modes.The lower-level problem represents an equilibrium model that describes passengers’ mode-choice behavior under the condition of multimodal transportation.The upper-level problem is to determine passenger-ticket price to maximize the revenue of transportation management departments while considering passengers’ mode-choice behavior.A heuristic algorithm for the bi-level problem is also proposed.Finally the applications of the model and its algorithm are illustrated with a practical example.

Key words: bi-level programming, sensitivity analysis, equilibrium model