CPS: Small: Collaborative Research: Optimal Ride Service For All — Users, Service Providers and Society

This initiative creates a framework enabling communities to guide emerging mobility services toward achieving system-wide objectives regarding efficiency and reliability. The approach involves strategically setting surcharges or credits on rider fares based on departure timing, routes, pooling arrangements, and pickup/dropoff locations, paired with provider subsidies tied to performance guarantees.

The research addresses fundamental questions about pricing public infrastructure like curbs and roadways while balancing travel demand for societal benefit. It integrates traveler-utility maximization with service-provider revenue goals through novel optimization and pricing mechanisms for both infrastructure and services. The work produces scalable algorithms for modeling mixed shared and personal vehicle flows across extensive networks.

The project leverages high-resolution vehicle trajectory data from mobility providers to validate and demonstrate this integrated cyber-physical-social system.