Using Bilateral Trading to Increase Ridership and User Permanence in Ridesharing Systems

One of the main obstacles that has challenged peer-to-peer (P2P) ridesharing systems in operating as standalone systems is reaching a critical mass of participants. Toward this goal, the authors propose the P2P ride exchange mechanism to increase customer retention. This mechanism gives riders the opportunity to purchase other riders’ itineraries, while providing suitable alternative rides to the sellers and therefore maximize the number of rider requests ridesharing systems can satisfy. The proposed mechanism maximizes expected user surplus, is robust towards selfish user manipulation, and has very low information requirements. If implemented correctly, P2P ride exchange effectively increases the number of served riders and enhances customer loyalty by engaging customers in the ride-matching process. The paper only focuses on the potential of the proposed schemes and does not delve into important aspects such as the regulatory changes as well as socio-political arguments against such systems that are beyond the scope of the paper.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP020 Standing Committee on Emerging and Innovative Public Transport and Technologies. Alternate title: Increasing Ridership and User Permanence in Ridesharing Systems Using Novel Peer-to-Peer Exchange Mechanism.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Masoud, Neda
  • Lloret-Batlle, Roger
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2016-1-10 to 2016-1-14
• Date: 2016

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 16p
• Monograph Title: TRB 95th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Customer satisfaction; Ridership; Ridesharing
• Uncontrolled Terms: Peer exchange
• Subject Areas: Operations and Traffic Management; Passenger Transportation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01594176
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 16-6425
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 21 2016 4:42PM