Masoud, Neda (University of Michigan Ann Arbor)

Incentive Design for Promoting Ridesharing

Scheduled for presentation during the Plenary Session "Plenary - Neda Masoud, Incentive Design for Promoting Ridesharing" (WeP0L), Wednesday, September 25, 2024, 09:00−10:00, Hall C

2024 IEEE 27th International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), September 24- 27, 2024, Edmonton, Canada

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on October 7, 2024

Abstract

Traffic congestion is a pressing global issue exacerbated by the prevalence of single-occupancy commuter trips. Ridesharing stands as a promising solution to alleviate this problem. Yet, numerous hurdles hinder its widespread adoption, notably the uncertainty of securing a return trip and the challenge of building a critical mass of participants. This talk will focus on the design of a Traveler Incentive Program (TIP) to address these obstacles. This program strategically allocates incentives to subsidize rides and incentivize behavioral shifts among select travelers. We formulate the underlying ride-matching problem as a budget-constrained min-cost flow problem and develop algorithmic tools with worst-case optimality bounds to solve large-scale instances of this problem. We further propose a polynomial-time budget-balanced version of the problem. Our numerical experiments demonstrate that incentivizing behavioral change yields far greater benefits than solely subsidizing rides. Remarkably, even a modest 2% flat tax rate can effectively double the system’s social welfare in the budget-balanced variant of the incentive program.