Regulating for-hire autonomous vehicles for an equitable multimodal transportation network

Abstract

This paper assesses the equity impacts of for-hire autonomous vehicles (AVs) and investigates regulatory policies that promote spatial and social equity in future autonomous mobility ecosystems. To this end, we consider a multimodal transportation network, where a ride-hailing platform operates a fleet of AVs to offer mobility-on-demand services in competition with a public transit agency that offers transit services on a transportation network. A game-theoretic model is developed to characterize the intimate interactions between the ride-hailing platform, the transit agency, and multiclass passengers with distinct income levels. An algorithm is proposed to compute the Nash equilibrium of the game and conduct an ex-post evaluation of the performance of the obtained solution. Based on the proposed framework, we evaluate the spatial and social equity in mobility benefits using the Theil index, and find that although the proliferation of for-hire AVs in the ride-hailing network improves overall mobility, the benefits are not fairly distributed among distinct locations or population groups, implying that the deployment of AVs will enlarge the existing spatial and social inequity gaps in the transportation network if no regulatory intervention is in place. To address this concern, we investigate two regulatory policies that can improve transport equity: (a) a minimum service-level requirement on ride-hailing services, which improves the spatial equity in the transport network; (b) a subsidy on transit services by taxing ride-hailing services, which promotes the use of public transit and improves the spatial and social equity of the transport network. We show that the minimum service-level requirement entails a trade-off: as a higher minimum service level is imposed, the spatial inequity reduces, but the social inequity will be exacerbated. On the other hand, subsidies on transit services improve mobility for low-income households in underserved areas. In certain regimes, the subsidy increases public transit ridership and simultaneously bridges spatial and social inequity gaps. These results are validated through realistic numerical studies for San Francisco.