A behavioral choice model of the use of car-sharing and ride-sourcing services

There are a number of disruptive mobility services that are increasingly finding their way into the marketplace. Two key examples of such services are car-sharing services and ride-sourcing services. In an effort to better understand the influence of various exogenous socio-economic and demographic variables on the frequency of use of ride-sourcing and car-sharing services, this paper presents a bivariate ordered probit model estimated on a survey data set derived from the 2014–2015 Puget Sound Regional Travel Study. Model estimation results show that users of these services tend to be young, well-educated, higher-income, working individuals residing in higher-density areas. There are significant interaction effects reflecting the influence of children and the built environment on disruptive mobility service usage. The model developed in this paper provides key insights into factors affecting market penetration of these services, and can be integrated in larger travel forecasting model systems to better predict the adoption and use of mobility-on-demand services.     

Exploring the influence of built environment on Uber demand

Ride-sourcing services have made significant changes to the transportation system, essentially creating a new mode of transport, arguably with its own relative utility compared to the other standard modes. As ride-sourcing services have become more popular each year and their markets have grown, so have the publications related to the emergence of these services. One question that has not been addressed yet is how the built environment, the so-called D variables (i.e., density, diversity, design, distance to transit, and destination accessibility), affect demand for ride-sourcing services. By having unique access to Uber trip data in 24 diverse U.S. regions, we provide a robust data-driven understanding of how ride-sourcing demand is affected by the built environment, after controlling for socioeconomic factors. Our results show that Uber demand is positively correlated with total population and employment, activity density, land use mix or entropy, and transit stop density of a census block group. In contrast, Uber demand is negatively correlated with intersection density and destination accessibility (both by auto and transit) variables. This result might be attributed to the relative advantages of other modes – driving, taking transit, walking, or biking – in areas with denser street networks and better regional job access. The findings of this paper have important implications for policy, planning, and travel demand modeling, where decision-makers seek solutions to shape the built environment in order to reduce automobile dependence and promote walking, biking, and transit use.     

Economic analysis of ride-sourcing markets

Ride-sourcing refers to an emerging urban mobility service that private car owners drive their own vehicles to provide for-hire rides. This paper analyzes the ride-sourcing market using an aggregate model where the matchings between customers and drivers are captured by an exogenous matching function. It is found that without any regulatory intervention a monopoly ride-sourcing platform will maximize the joint profit with its drivers. On the other hand, the first-best solution is not sustainable when the matching function exhibits increasing returns to scale and the cost function of the platform is subject to economies of scale. Regardless of the examined market scenarios, the average waiting time of customers is proportional to the average searching time of drivers. We establish conditions for regulators to solely regulate the commission charged by the platform to guarantee the second-best. We further investigate the competition of ride-sourcing platforms and find that competition does not necessarily lower the price level or improve social welfare. In the latter case, regulators may rather encourage the merger of the platforms and regulate them directly as a monopolist.     

Geometric matching and spatial pricing in ride-sourcing markets

This paper develops a model to investigate the effects of spatial pricing on ride-sourcing markets. The model is built upon a discrete time geometric matching framework that matches customers with drivers nearby. We demonstrate that a customer may be matched to a distant vehicle when demand surges, yielding an inefficient supply state. We further investigate market equilibrium under spatial pricing assuming a revenue maximizing platform, and find that the platform may resort to relatively higher price to avoid the inefficient supply state if spatial price differentiation is not allowed. Although spatial pricing facilitates market clearing, the platform may still set price more than the efficient level, which compromises the public interest. We then propose a commission rate cap regulation that reaps the flexibility of spatial pricing and can achieve the second best under some homogeneity assumptions.     

A universal distribution law of network detour ratios

Using trajectory data of normal taxis and ride-sourcing vehicles for 10 cities with various sizes in China, we analyze trip distance characteristics by examining the distribution of network detour ratios. The detour ratio for a specific ride is the ratio of the actual driving distance to the corresponding Euclidean (straight-line) distance. We find that, in spite of their different sizes and geographical features, the various cities exhibit an amazingly similar distribution law of network detour ratios: the mean of the detour ratios is inversely proportional to the Euclidean distance with an intercept. We further verify our findings with extensive simulation experiments for a hypothetical circular city with a directional grid street network. Our finding of this universal distribution law of network detour ratios contrasts sharply with the traditional wisdom of modeling throughout the past 50 years that have typically assumed a constant road detour ratio or factor within the range of 1.25–1.41. Our finding in the urban context also has far-reaching implications for fundamental research in many fields such as human mobility, human geography, facility location problems, logistic distribution networks and urban transportation planning.     

Cost-benefit analysis,government policy and the British railway network

In 1963 the Beeching Report on Britain's railways proposed the closure of a substantial part of the railway network (British Railways Board, 1963). Although many services were withdrawn, disquiet at the Report's failure to analyse the social benefits of rail passenger services eventually led to the application of the technique of cost-benefit analysis to the problem of unremunerative rail services. However, although such studies revealed that the retention of many rural rail services could not be justified on social grounds, these services were not withdrawn. This paper outlines briefly the history of attempts to deal with the question of the optimal size of the rail passenger network. Secondly, it considers the social cost-benefit case for reducing the present size of the network in Britain and the quantifiable benefits from such a reduction. The problem of joint costs is discussed. Finally, it attempts to explain the failure of successive Governments to apply the results of cost-benefit studies in practice, and suggests how the decision-making process might be altered to facilitate a more rational approach towards public transport problems in Britain.     

Service quality,satisfaction and behavioral intentions towards public transport from the point of view of private vehicle users

Transportation - In order to attract car users towards the public transport services in an urban and metropolitan context, contributing to a sustainable mobility in cities, it is fundamental to...     

Ridesharing in North America: Past,Present, and Future

Since the late 1990s, numerous ridematching programmes have integrated the Internet, mobile phones, and social networking into their services. Online ridematching systems are employing a range of new strategies to create “critical mass”: (1) regional and large employer partnerships, (2) financial incentives, (3) social networking to younger populations, and (4) real-time ridematching services that employ “smartphones” and automated ridematching software. Enhanced casual carpooling approaches, which focus on “meeting places”, are also being explored. Today, ridesharing represents approximately 8–11% of the transportation modal share in Canada and the USA, respectively. There are approximately 638 ridematching programmes in North America. Ridesharing's evolution can be categorized into five phases: (1) World War II car-sharing (or carpooling) clubs; (2) major responses to the 1970s energy crises; (3) early organized ridesharing schemes; (4) reliable ridesharing systems; and (5) technology-enabled ridematching. While ridesharing's future growth and direction are uncertain, the next decade is likely to include greater interoperability among services, technology integration, and stronger policy support. In light of growing concerns about climate change, congestion, and oil dependency, more research is needed to better understand ridesharing's impacts on infrastructure, congestion, and energy/emissions.     

On the financial viability of mass transit development: the case of Hong Kong

Mass transit projects are often a top contender of many cities to meet their increasing demand for travel. Despite the global trend of privatization, mass transit services, as public goods, remain largely being provided and operated by the public sector. Hong Kong is one of the few exceptions that all mass transit services are commercially operated. Both rail and bus services in Hong Kong are reputable for their quality and profitability, often serving as benchmarks for new projects. In this study, we investigate the factors contributing to this success. In particular, we ascertain the quality of transit service provision by the private sector over the past two decades. Then, we conduct an in-depth analysis of the account books of leading railway and bus operators in Hong Kong so as to shed light on their financial viability. Through this study, we hope to present crucial factors for providing financially viable private transit services.     

Shared ride services in North America: definitions,impacts, and the future of pooling

ABSTRACT

Shared ride services allow riders to share a ride to a common destination. They include ridesharing (carpooling and vanpooling); ridesplitting (a pooled version of ridesourcing/transportation network companies); taxi sharing; and microtransit. In recent years, growth of Internet-enabled wireless technologies, global satellite systems, and cloud computing - coupled with data sharing – are causing people to increase their use of mobile applications to share a ride. Some shared ride services, such as carpooling and vanpooling, can provide transportation, infrastructure, environmental, and social benefits. This paper reviews common shared ride service models, definitions, and summarises existing North American impact studies. Additionally, we explore the convergence of shared mobility; electrification; and automation, including the potential impacts of shared automated vehicle (SAV) systems. While SAV impacts remain uncertain, many practitioners and academic research predict higher efficiency, affordability, and lower greenhouse gas emissions. The impacts of SAVs will likely depend on the number of personally owned automated vehicles; types of sharing (concurrent or sequential); and the future modal split among public transit, shared fleets, and pooled rides. We conclude the paper with recommendations for local governments and public agencies to help in managing the transition to highly automated vehicles and encouraging higher occupancy modes.     

A literature review of mobility services: definitions,modelling state-of-the-art,and key considerations for a conceptual modelling framework

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a comprehensive literature review focused on the supply side of mobility services, providing relevant insights at the conceptual, operational, and modelling levels. Definitions are first drawn from the Mobility as a Service paradigm due to its predominance in the literature. This is followed by an assessment of the operational features of a range of mobility services, including carsharing, bikesharing, ridehailing, and demand responsive transit. To conclude the review, the state-of-the-art in modelling approaches for mobility services is reported, at different levels of complexity and integration. Three of the most important findings and arguments from this paper suggest that a high degree of generality exists for operational features of mobility services; that it is essential to make a distinction between Mobility as a Service and a mobility service in isolation; along with the argument that human agency should be carefully considered in modelling efforts, both for user agent and driver agent decision-making processes. Finally, key considerations are proposed for the future development of a conceptual framework for modelling the supply side of mobility services, which would have a generic service provider model as its core component.     

Market mechanism design for profitable on-demand transport services

On-demand transport services in the form of dial-a-ride and taxis are crucial parts of the transport infrastructure in all major cities. However, not all on-demand transport services are equal: not-for-profit dial-a-ride services with coordinated drivers significantly differ from profit-motivated taxi services with uncoordinated drivers. In fact, there are two key threads of work on efficient scheduling, routing, and pricing for passengers: dial-a-ride services; and taxi services. Unfortunately, there has been only limited development of algorithms for joint optimization of scheduling, routing, and pricing; largely due to the widespread assumption of fixed pricing. In this paper, we introduce another thread: profit-motivated on-demand transport services with coordinated drivers. To maximize provider profits and the efficiency of the service, we propose a new market mechanism for this new thread of on-demand transport services, where passengers negotiate with the service provider. In contrast to previous work, our mechanism jointly optimizes scheduling, routing, and pricing. Ultimately, we demonstrate that our approach can lead to higher profits and reduced passenger prices, compared with standard fixed price approaches, while also improving efficiency.     

Commercialising the management and maintenance of trunk roads in the United Kingdom

Public funding of new infrastructure from money raised through taxes or borrowing has been questioned globally in recent years. One alternative solution has been to finance major capital projects through Build, Operate & Transfer (BOT) schemes. In the United Kingdom, the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) has become established as the procurement method of choice for many projects and services in central and local government. It is a natural development of other changes in government administration which have been introduced over the past few years. Projects delivered in this way enable government to become a buyer of services on behalf of the public rather than a direct provider of those services to the public, taking advantage of private sector management skills and resources in their delivery. The PFI has demonstrated its ability to deliver value for money solutions in projects across a range of capital-intensive public services, but the greatest success in delivering projects has been in the transport sector. This paper outlines how the British Government's Highways Agency has restructured and commercialised the management and maintenance of the strategic road network for which it is responsible, and how it has been at the forefront of developing successful privately financed projects. The paper explains the Agency's particular version of BOT – Design, Build, Finance and Operate (DBFO) projects. These projects are delivering new and improved road construction and maintenance, providing better services to users of the country's strategic road network and achieving significant value for money savings for taxpayers.     

Privatisation and the quality of rail services

Using the concept of generalised costs to reflect quality in rail services, we consider the level of provision and quality of these services in the various forms they may take in a privatised environment within a model where we assume linear and separable demand and cost functions for analytical simplicity. Using the Pareto-efficient output and quality outcomes under a fully integrated system for reference (as well as those for a fully integrated profit-maximising monopolist) we show that if either bilateral monopoly or complementary monopoly emerge as a market structure the output of train services and their quality will generally fall. In the case of the emergence of both bilateral monopoly and complementary monopoly our analysis again suggests poor welfare outcomes. The implication that can be drawn from our analysis is that a regulator of a privatised rail system faces some severe problems if she is to attain the appropriate welfare targets.     

Ferry service network design: optimal fleet size,routing, and scheduling

The study formulated a ferry network design problem by considering the optimal fleet size, routing, and scheduling for both direct and multi-stop services. The objective function combines both the operator and passengers’ performance measures. Mathematically, the model is formulated as a mixed integer multiple origin–destination network flow problem with ferry capacity constraints. To solve this problem of practical size, this study developed a heuristic algorithm that exploits the polynomial-time performance of shortest path algorithms. Two scenarios of ferry services in Hong Kong were solved to demonstrate the performance of the heuristic algorithm. The results showed that the heuristic produced solutions that were within 1.3% from the CPLEX optimal solutions. The computational time is within tens of seconds even for problem size that is beyond the capability of CPLEX.     

A dynamic station strategy to improve the performance of flex-route transit services

As an innovative combination of conventional fixed-route transit and demand responsive service, flex-route transit is currently the most popular type of flexible transit services. This paper proposes a dynamic station strategy to improve the performance of flex-route transit in operating environments with uncertain travel demand. In this strategy, accepted curb-to-curb stops are labeled as temporary stations, which can be utilized by rejected requests for their pick-up and drop-off. The user cost function is defined as the performance measure of transit systems. Analytical models and simulations are constructed to test the feasibility of implementing the dynamic station strategy in flex-route transit services. The study over a real-life flex-route service indicates that the proposed dynamic station strategy could reduce the user cost by up to 30% without any additional operating cost, when an unexpectedly high travel demand surpasses the designed service capacity of deviation services.     

Perceived accessibility,mobility, and connectivity of public transportation systems

Although public transportation is considered effective at reducing the external cost of driving private vehicles, many urbanites do not use public transportation. This study develops measures employing accessibility, mobility, and seamless connectivity for an entire public transportation service chain as indicators for evaluating public transport services, prioritizes underperforming scenarios from the perspective of urban travelers, and derives various market segmentation strategies that consider different socio-demographic characteristics. A conceptual model is set up herein to assess these latent constructs that describe unobservable and immeasurable characteristics. As a Likert ordinal scale can generate misleading statistical inferences, the Rasch model is used to eliminate bias generated by an ordinal scale when measuring these three latent constructs separately. The Rasch model compares person parameters with item parameters, which are then subjected to logarithmic transformation along a logit scale so as to recognize specific difficulties of service scenarios that cannot be easily eliminated by certain urban travelers. The multidimensional Rasch model also measures the perceptions of urban travelers in terms of the interactions between accessibility, mobility, and seamless connectivity of this public transportation system. While comparing urban travelers of two large cities in Taiwan, Taipei and Kaohsiung, the empirical results demonstrate that perceived accessibility, mobility, and seamless connectivity differ based on travelers’ age, frequency of weekly sports activities, and environmental awareness. This paper also advances appropriate improvement strategies and provides policy suggestions for urban planners, public transportation service operation agencies, and policy makers when they seek to create user-friendly public transportation services. The proposed approach can be generalized in other cities by considering their local context uniqueness and further evaluating their public transport services.     

Measuring quality of service in dial-a-ride operations: the case of a Canadian city

In many countries, dial-a-ride services are provided by public authorities to elderly and handicapped people who cannot use regular transit. Cost minimization is key to running these services, but one can observe a growing interest in quality measurement and improvement. A first step in improving quality is to define a quality measurement scale specific to dial-a-ride services. A second step is to incorporate quality measurements in mathematical models that serve as a basis for optimization algorithms. To this end, an extensive survey of dial-a-ride users was conducted in Longueuil, the largest suburb of Montreal, Canada. This paper describes the steps of the survey and presents its main conclusions: (1) 56 attributes were identified based on interviews, (2) the questionnaire developed has proved to be reliable and valid, (3) an exploratory factor analysis allowed us to determine 13 dimensions of quality in dial-a-ride services, (4) the most important criteria for users were identified, and (5) population segmenting variables by which subgroups of users can be categorized were also determined. Managerial implications of our results are also discussed.     

Modeling urban taxi services in road networks: Progress,problem and prospect

Traditionally, many economists have examined the models and economics of urban taxi services under various types of regulation such as entry restriction and price control in an aggregate way. Only recently have we modeled urban taxi services in a network context. A realistic method has been proposed to describe vacant and occupied taxi movements in a road network and taxi drivers' search behavior for customers. A few extensions have been made to deal with demand elasticity and congestion effects together with development of efficient solution algorithms. Calibration and validation of the network taxi service models have been conducted towards their practical applications. This paper presents an overview of the research that has been carried out by the authors to develop network equilibrium models and solution algorithms for urban taxi services, and offers perspectives for future researches.     

Integrated Transport System of the South-Moravian Region and its impact on rural development

It is generally presupposed that the infrastructure and availability of services of general interest (like schools, medical care, social services and also public transport) impact on present demographic development in rural areas, namely depopulation and aging. Such services affect the quality of life of local people and sometimes they perform a vital necessity. It is possible to say that the absence of the mentioned services should be compensated by an effective system of public transport. In other case, especially those people who are not able to use individual cars due to the age, health, legal conditions or financial situation are bequeathed on an assistance of the family or neighbors or they stay cut off and excluded. This paper is aimed at the verification of the presupposition in the case of the South-Moravian Region – NUTS 3 region occupying the south-eastern part of the Czech Republic, bordering with Austria and Slovakia. The research method lies in analysis of the frequency, travel time and fare of public transport system and its comparison with demographic development in rural areas, especially in the peripheral ones. The results are discussed in view of the system of central places in the region and present urbanization processes like suburbanization, counterurbanization and reurbanization.