The Associated Press reported the findings of a study by he Department of Transportation that examined the effects on average airlines when new, low-priced carriers, such as Southwest Airlines or Vanguard Airlines, entered one of three city-pair markets: Baltimore-Cleveland, Kansas City San Francisco, or Baltimore- Providence. Use the following excerpts from the newspaper article to calculate the arc elasticity of demand for each of the three city-pairs. How do the three computed elasticities compare? Based on the computed elasticities, describe travelers' responsiveness to the reduction in airfares.

1."(In) Baltimore and Cleveland for example,... just 12,790 people flew between those cities in the last 3 months of 1992, at an average fare of $233. Then Dallas-based Southwest Airlines entered the market. In the last 3 months of 1996, 115,040 people flew between the cities at an average fare of $66"

2."(On) the Kansas City- San Francisco connection.. (during) the last quarter of 1994 some 35,690 people made the trip at an average fare of $165. Two years later, after the arrival of Vanguard Airlines, fares had dropped to an average of $107 and traffic nearly doubles to 68,100."

3."On the Baltimore- Providence, R.I., route, where the average fare fell from $196 to $57,... the number of passengers carried jumped from 11,960 to 94,116."