A ridesharing simulation model that considers dynamic supply-demand interactions

Abstract

This paper presents a new ridesharing simulation model that accounts for dynamic driver supply and passenger demand, and complex interactions between drivers and passengers. The proposed simulation model explicitly considers driver and passenger acceptance/rejection on the matching options, and cancelation before/after being matched. New simulation events, procedures and modules have been developed to handle these realistic interactions. Ridesharing pricing bounds that result in high matching option accept rate are derived. The capabilities of the simulation model are illustrated using numerical experiments. The experiments confirm the importance of considering supply and demand interactions and provide new insights to ridesharing operations. Results show that higher prices are needed to attract drivers with short trip durations to participate in ridesharing, and larger matching window could have negative impacts on overall ridesharing success rate. Comparison results further illustrate that the proposed simulation model is able to replicate the predefined “true” success rate, in the cases that driver and passenger interactions occur.