Introduction of ride-sourcing markets

Abstract

The popularity of smartphones and the mobile Internet has catalysed the rapid growth of on-demand ride-sourcing services provided via online platforms by transportation network companies, such as Uber, Lyft, Didi, Grab and Ola. These emerging mobility services have had profound effects on the way we travel and on multimodal urban mobility systems. This book provides an analytical framework for the investigation of on-demand ride-sourcing services and offers some managerial insights that can aid platforms to enhance their operations and help the government reform their regulation of the market. This chapter offers a brief introduction to on-demand ride-sourcing markets by outlining the intriguing relationships between platform decision variables (such as the trip fare, the wage, and the matching strategies) and system endogenous variables (such as the passenger demand, the driver supply, and the waiting time). In addition, this chapter reviews related studies on ride-sourcing services that examine a variety of topics, including pricing, equilibrium analysis, revenue management, government regulation analysis, matching and pooling, traffic congestion externality, platform competition and integration, and coordination with other transportation modes.