SHORT-TERM REPOSITIONING FOR EMPTY VEHICLES ON RIDE-SOURCING PLATFORMS

By

Prof Hai Wang

Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University

School of Information Systems, Singapore Management University

Abstract

Due to stochastic demand, supply, and their imbalance on shared transportation ride-sourcing platforms, the repositioning guidance for empty vehicles (with idle drivers) is critical to improve passenger service level, driver income, and platform revenues. In this work, we study the short-term empty vehicles repositioning guidance using a two-stage model. First, we propose a general idealized repositioning strategy with closed-form solutions assuming that all travel times between regions are equal with a time unit; second, considering the city topology and spatial characteristics, we study the specific repositioning optimization with practical general travel times among regions and provide theoretical performance bounds. Using real data from a ride-sourcing platform, we evaluate the method numerically and discuss some managerial intuitions.

Biography

Dr. Wang is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. He received a Bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University, dual Master’s degrees in operations research and transportation from MIT, and a doctoral degree in operations research from MIT. Dr. Wang is also an Assistant Professor in the School of Information Systems at Singapore Management University. His research has focused on methodologies of operations research, analytics and optimization, data-driven modeling and machine learning algorithms, and their applications in Smart Cities and urban systems, including innovative transportation, advanced logistics, and intelligent healthcare systems. He has published in leading journals such as Transportation Science, American Economic Review Papers & Proceedings, Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, and Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.  Dr. Wang serves as the guest-editor for the Special Issue on Innovative Shared Transportation in Transportation Research Part B, as a reviewer for over 25 different academic journals, and has been named a Chan Wui & Yunyin Rising Star Fellow in Transportation. He was nominated for the Goodwin Medal, MIT’s top teaching award for graduate students and has been awarded the Excellent Teaching Award for junior faculty at Singapore Management University. During his Ph.D. studies at MIT, he also served as the co-President of the MIT Chinese Students & Scholars Association and as Chair of the MIT-China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum.

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