Practical taxi sharing schemes at large transport terminals

Abstract

This paper addresses taxi sharing at large transport terminals, where passengers are queuing for taxis. It aims to develop an allocation method for the optimal taxi sharing plan. Two key questions are addressed: who should share a taxi and how much each of them should pay. Regarding the second question, a fair fare allocation method is developed. Then, the optimal sharing plan of two different charging types are dealt with: deterministic fare and stochastic fare. A system optimal static model and an efficient dynamic model are developed for the case of deterministic fare, both of which give better-off solutions. Regarding the stochastic fare, an averagely optimal solution based on the expectation value of fares is first provided. Consequently, to avoid the psychology concept “loss aversion”, a chance constrained stochastic program is further developed. Finally, a numerical study shows the significant gain of passengers and drivers from the sharing scheme.