Service Level And Operating Efficiency Of Urban Taxi Network System Involving E-hailing Platform

With rapid development of smart-phone e-hailing apps,taxi market has been no longer an oligopolistic industry of traditional taxi services.At present,travel demands of urban residents are collectively undertaken by traditional taxi services and rising e-hailing taxi services.Therefore,understanding the market rules of competition and balances between traditional taxi services and rising e-hailing taxi services will provide great help for formulation of taxi-related policies.This paper is aimed to study the service level and operating efficiency of urban taxi networks involving e-hailing platform and to explore the complex relationship between traditional taxi services and rising e-hailing taxi services to provide references for relevant taxi management policies and measures.In order to improve the service level and operating efficiency of urban taxi networks,the first step is to understand taxi markets of traditional taxi services and rising e-hailing taxi services.The study method of this paper is modeling and optimization.Firstly,a taxi service network model considering e-hailing services should be built.Secondly,the proof of the model solution's existence and solution algorithm should be given.Next,explore the influence of different taxi fleet sizes,pricing strategies,hailing modes and traffic management measures on the service level and operating efficiency of urban taxi networks by sensitivity analysis.Lastly,a bi-level programming is built to improve the service level and operating efficiency of urban taxi networks.In particular,this paper also focuses on the impact of traffic management policies on taxi network system operation efficiency,like the social topic “Whether occupied taxis should share exclusive bus lanes”.In order to give an answer for this topic,the taxi service network model is further expanded,sensitivity analysis and optimization from numerical experiments are used to evaluate this traffic management policy's effect on the service level and operating efficiency of urban taxi networks.The conclusions are as follows: 1)The fleet sizes of traditional taxis and e-hailing vehicles can significantly impact the service level of taxi network and operational efficiency indicators such as customer behaviors,the average waiting time of vacant vehicle drivers,the average waiting time of customers,etc.2)Changing the allocation ratio of dispatching fees paid by taxis cannot have a substantial impact on the taxi market.Therefore,it is necessary to optimize the dispatch fee amount and allocation ratio simultaneously in order to significantly change the decision-making behavior of participants in the taxi market.3)The setting of price fluctuation coefficient can control the entry and exit of private cars in the taxi market,and its value has a great influence on the behavior of vacant drivers and service level of customers in the taximarket.4)The results of numerical experiments show that the assumption of opening bus lanes for taxis is reasonable,and the optimization results can improve the operation efficiency of taxi network and the overall operation efficiency of urban traffic system.