Ride-pooling adoption, efficiency and level of service under alternative demand, behavioural and pricing settings

Previous studies into the potential benefits of ride pooling failed to account for the trade-off that users likely make when considering a shared ride. We address this shortcoming by formulating user net benefit stemming from pooling as a compensatory function where the additional travel time and on-board discomfort need to be compensated by the price discount for a traveller to choose a pooled ride over a private ride. The proposed formulation is embedded in a method for matching travel requests and vehicles. We conduct a series of experiments investigating how the potential of ride-pooling services depends on demand characteristics, user preferences and the pricing policy adopted by the service provider. Our results suggest that the total vehicle mileage savings found by previous studies is only attainable when users are very willing to share their ride (i.e. attach low premium to private rides) and are offered a 50% discount for doing so.