Fare inspection patrolling under in-station selective inspection policy

A patrolling strategy that defines fare inspection frequencies on a proof-of-payment trans-
portation system is operationally useful to the transit authority when there is a mechanism
for its practical implementation. This study addresses the operational implementation of a
fare inspection patrolling strategy under an in-station selective inspection policy using an
unpredictable patrolling schedule, where the transit authority select a patrolling schedule
each day with some probability. The challenge is to determine the set of patrolling schedules
and their respective probabilities of being selected whose systematic day-to-day applica-
tion matches the inspection frequencies that inhibit the action of opportunistic passengers
in the medium term. A Stackelberg game approach is used to represent the hierarchical
decision making process between the transit authority and opportunistic passengers. The het-
erogeneity of opportunistic passengers’ decisions to evade fare payment is taken into account.
Numerical experiments show that a joint strategy-schedule approach provides good-quality
unpredictable patrolling schedules with respect to the optimality gap for large-scale networks.