Piggyback on Idle Ride-Sourcing Drivers for Integrated On-Demand and Flexible Intracity Parcel Delivery Services

Yang Liu () and Sen Li ()
Additional contact information
Yang Liu: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong
Sen Li: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong

Transportation Science, 2025, vol. 59, issue 3, 494-517

Abstract: This paper investigates spatial pricing and fleet management strategies for an integrated platform that provides both ride-sourcing and intracity parcel delivery services, leveraging the idle time of ride-sourcing drivers across a transportation network. Specifically, the integrated platform simultaneously offers on-demand ride-sourcing services for passengers and multiple modes of parcel delivery services for customers, including (1) on-demand delivery , where drivers immediately pick up and deliver parcels upon receiving a delivery request; and (2) flexible delivery , where drivers pick up (or drop off) parcels only when they are idle and waiting for the next ride-sourcing order. A semi-Markov process (SMP) model is proposed to characterize the status change of drivers under joint movement of passengers and parcels over the transportation network with limited vehicle capacity, where the service quality of ride-sourcing services, on-demand delivery services, and flexible delivery services are quantified. Building on the SMP model, incentives for ride-sourcing passengers, delivery customers, drivers, and the platform are captured through an economic equilibrium model. Subsequently, we derive the platform’s optimal spatial pricing by solving a nonconvex profit-maximization problem. We establish the well-posedness of the model and introduce a customized algorithm that enhances computation time and numerical stability when determining the platform’s optimal strategies, outperforming the benchmark method. We also validate the proposed model and algorithm through a comprehensive case study of San Francisco. Numerical results indicate that ride-sourcing and parcel delivery services exert both complementary and competitive effects on each other, with the integrated business model’s overall impact hinging on the complex interaction between ride-sourcing orders, on-demand parcel delivery orders, and flexible parcel delivery orders.

Keywords: ride-sourcing platform; parcel delivery services; transportation network; economic equilibrium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2024.0601 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:59:y:2025:i:3:p:494-517

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Transportation Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().