The market-oriented reform of railway coal transport price is a key initiative to optimize the transport structure and enhance the railway’s market share in coal transport. Based on the competitive relationship between road and railway, this paper explores the impact of the floating pricing mechanism of railway coal transport on the allocation of capacity and enterprise benefits. Firstly, we construct a model to consider the selection behaviour of highway and railway freight transport modes to reveal shippers’ choice of coal transport modes, and analyse shippers’ preference for highway and railway based on transport cost, timeliness and price elasticity; secondly, we combine railway coal transport clearing rules with market-oriented floating pricing policy, establish a pricing decision model with the goal of optimizing transport volume and carrier revenue, and quantify the full railway tariff, transport time and volume, surplus and so on. Secondly, we establish a pricing decision model with the objective of optimizing transport volume and carrier revenue, quantify the correlation between railway full-time tariff, transport time and indicators such as transport volume and surplus, and simulate the competitive equilibrium between railway and highway under different floating zones. The case study shows that, coal freight price floating coefficient in the 0-30% range, the railway in the coal transport market share with the increase in price concessions was first rapidly rising after the growth rate of slowing down the trend, the owner of the price sensitivity of the marginal utility of the diminishing; through the adjustment of the price of coal and carbon transport, the railway freight sector not only to increase the market share of the coal industry, but also conducive to the achievement of their own business objectives, for the railway transport enterprise The formulation of coal transport price provides a scientific and reasonable reference basis.