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Trans. Planning Journal
| Title | Multiple Period Optimization of a Taxi Market |
|---|---|
| Author | S. K. Jason Chang, Chi-Hsuan Wu, Ta-Wei Shen and Ya-Wen Chen |
| Summary | Featured with convenience, comfort, door-to-door and privacy, taxi has become an important mode in urban public transportation. Because taxi service is involved with public welfare, lots of issues should be planned and managed properly, such as vacancy rate, pricing scheme, market structure, and plate grant. Therefore, many researches had established optimization models to explore these important issues. Based on past studies, this study develops an optimization model with consideration of supply and demand in multiple periods and the concept of idle cost. With the multiple period optimization feature, we would be able to analyze the difference of market between peak and off-peak hours and the extra supply issue in off-peak hour. We can then find the optimal equilibrium in each time period in terms of fare, vacancy rate and service quality. In the study, taxi market in Taipei metropolis is used as a case study. The numerical results show that in order to maximize the social welfare and balance the revenue and cost, the optimal fare in peak, off peak and midnight will be 59.0, 39.2 and 36.0 NTD per kilometer, respectively while the optimal vacancy rate will be 40.0%, 33.3% and 27.7%, respectively. The fleet size of taxi market in Taipei metropolis should be 29,455 under the assumption that the daily average operation hour of taxi drivers is 9 hours. With the results of multi-period market optimization model, we can improve the social welfare by providing fewer fleet sizes of taxi while keeping the vacancy rate at optimal level in each time period. It is suggested that a differential pricing scheme applied in the taxi market will have a win-win situation for operator, customer, and public sector. |
| Vol. | 43 |
| No. | 1 |
| Page | 89 |
| Year | 2014 |
| Month | 3 |
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