Strategic Analysis of a Passenger-Taxi System - Engineering Information Institute

Articles

Strategic Analysis of a Passenger-Taxi System [MASS 2014]
Author(s)
Zhaotong Lian
ABSTRACT
We study a passenger-taxi double-ended queueing system in this paper. Our main purpose is to optimize the allocation of taxi market resources and maximize the social welfare. We derive an explicit expression of the optimal buffer and found that the social welfare function is discretely unimodal with respect to the size of the taxi buffer. It's useful in designing the optimal size of the taxi buffer in the public transportation system. We then analyze the strategic behavior of the passengers who decide whether to join the system or to balk in both observable and unobservable cases. In the observable case, we derive the optimal selfish threshold that maximizes a passenger's revenue. We also derive the conditions of the existence of the optimal selfless threshold that maximizes the social welfare. In the unobservable case, we discuss the equilibrium strategies of the selfish passengers based on Nash equilibrium theory and derive a formula of optimal arrival rate for the selfless passengers. Further, we figure out the relationship between the optimal thresholds and the optimal taxi/passenger arrival rates. We then analyze the strategies of the government, and derive the conditions whether the government should subsidize or levy the taxi drivers.
KEYWORDS
Strategic Analysis, Passenger-Taxi System
References