A path to take passengers from single to shared rides: a study on ridesplitting

Abstract

In the scenario of expanding ride-sourcing, ridesplitting still struggles to attract customers for everyday rides. However, most studies disregard passengers’ willingness to hire ridesplitting while evaluating the service potential. Hence, we propose a simulation study to evaluate the impacts of willingness to share on driver availability and trip measurements, such as traveled times and distances. The investigation considered a simulated urban network based on data from Shenzhen, China. Results indicate that higher willingness to share increases the number of available drivers, whereas increases trip characteristics variability. In summary, reducing relative variability is a path to attract more passengers for ridesplitting services.