Publications

Abstract : The study attempts to identify the determinants and forecasting estimates of ferry service revenue of the Penang Port Ltd., Malaysia, a government link company fully owned by the Ministry of Finance. Penang ferry service is unique in the sense that the regular employees are making use of the facilities daily to commute to their place of work and residence. In this study, the patterns of the revenue per trip for Penang Port Limited are investigated and it may be customized to any Port in the world. The analysis of the study reveals that the main contributors to the revenue are car commuters, motorcycle commuters and passengers in that order. The lean, moderate and peak periods of the utility of ferry services were identified with respect to the months of the year through seasonal decomposition using the monthly commuters’ data from January 2005 to December 2010. The appropriate statistical models were fitted to forecast the revenue estimates per ferry trip. The forecasted revenue for January 2011 and February 2011 were compared with the actual figures and it coincides with ±2% variation, indicates that the fitted models are robust. Further, the system study enlightening the triggering problems in operating ferry services was analyzed and the remedial measures have been suggested to optimize the overall revenue.