TY - JOUR
T1 - Assessing Two-way and One-way Carsharing: an Agent-Based Simulation Approach
AU - Giorgione, Giulio
AU - Bolzani, Luca
AU - Viti, Francesco
N1 - Conference code: 23
PY - 2021/2/3
Y1 - 2021/2/3
N2 - Carsharing companies can customize their service by adopting different pricing schemes and offers with the aim of increasing fleet use and profits. Different business models have been developed such as round-trip and one-way. It is clear that, even though many aspects of the business model and operations are the same, the different way in which these services are supplied leads to a diverse response from the users. In this work, we analyze how a fixed pricing scheme affects the behavior of the members of two different carsharing systems: two-way and one-way, explicitly considering their different income distributions to analyze social equity aspects. The dynamic pricing policy is simulated in MATSim, an agent-based simulator able to generate realistic mode choices based on individual activity-travel behavior. Scenarios with a synthetic population of carsharing members for the city of Berlin are analyzed. We aim to provide an experimental analysis that addresses the different behavior of different demand sectors, categorized by income, in function of the supply distributed on the territory. Simulation results show that the two services are not in competition between each other: the two-way service is used as a substitute for private cars while the one-way system is preferred from agents who choose to use multiple types of modes during the day. The response from the different income classes tends to be similar for both services since all the users within the same purchase power have the same degree of acceptance for both systems.
AB - Carsharing companies can customize their service by adopting different pricing schemes and offers with the aim of increasing fleet use and profits. Different business models have been developed such as round-trip and one-way. It is clear that, even though many aspects of the business model and operations are the same, the different way in which these services are supplied leads to a diverse response from the users. In this work, we analyze how a fixed pricing scheme affects the behavior of the members of two different carsharing systems: two-way and one-way, explicitly considering their different income distributions to analyze social equity aspects. The dynamic pricing policy is simulated in MATSim, an agent-based simulator able to generate realistic mode choices based on individual activity-travel behavior. Scenarios with a synthetic population of carsharing members for the city of Berlin are analyzed. We aim to provide an experimental analysis that addresses the different behavior of different demand sectors, categorized by income, in function of the supply distributed on the territory. Simulation results show that the two services are not in competition between each other: the two-way service is used as a substitute for private cars while the one-way system is preferred from agents who choose to use multiple types of modes during the day. The response from the different income classes tends to be similar for both services since all the users within the same purchase power have the same degree of acceptance for both systems.
KW - Carsharing
KW - Agent-based Simulation
KW - Mode choice
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2021.01.064
U2 - 10.1016/j.trpro.2021.01.064
DO - 10.1016/j.trpro.2021.01.064
M3 - Conference article
SN - 2352-1457
VL - 52
SP - 541
EP - 548
JO - Transportation Research Procedia
JF - Transportation Research Procedia
T2 - 23rd EURO Working Group on Transportation Meeting
Y2 - 16 September 2020 through 18 September 2020
ER -