Economies and diseconomies of scale in on-demand ridepooling systems

Economies and diseconomies of scale in on-demand ridepooling systems

Fielbaum, Andres (TU Delft Learning & Autonomous Control; University of Sydney)
Tirachini, Alejandro (University of Twente; Universidad de Chile)
Alonso Mora, J. (TU Delft Learning & Autonomous Control)

2023

We analyse the sources of economies and diseconomies of scale in On-Demand Ridepooling (ODRP), disentangling three effects: when demand grows, average costs are reduced due to i) a larger fleet that diminishes waiting and walking times (Mohring Effect), and ii) matching users with more similar routes (Better-matching Effect). A counter-balance force (Extra-detour Effect), occurs when iii) the number of passengers per vehicle increases and users face longer detours. At low demand levels, there is little sharing and the Mohring effect prevails; as demand grows, more passengers per vehicle push for the Extra-detour Effect to dominate; eventually, vehicles run at capacity, and the Better-matching Effect prevails. The last two effects are specific to ODRP as the routes are not fixed but adapted online. Our simulations show that considering both users' and operators’ costs, scale economies prevail, and that ODRP with human-driven vehicles and walks allowed has total costs similar to door-to-door systems with driverless vehicles.

Automated vehicles
Better-matching effect
Extra-detour effect
Mohring effect
On-demand mobility
Ridepooling
Scale economies

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:0e963b39-5538-415d-b266-db58237e3e98

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecotra.2023.100313

2023-11-13

2212-0122

Economics of Transportation, 34

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

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© 2023 Andres Fielbaum, Alejandro Tirachini, J. Alonso Mora