How would mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) platform survive as an intermediary? From the viewpoint of stability in many-to-many matching

TL;DR

This paper models the stability of MaaS platforms as intermediaries in multi-modal transport networks using many-to-many matching theory, proposing a pricing scheme that ensures stable, profitable, and welfare-enhancing operations.

Contribution

It introduces a stable matching framework for MaaS assignment and pricing, ensuring existence and uniqueness of stable outcomes in multi-modal transportation.

Findings

Stable outcomes always exist under the proposed pricing scheme.

The optimal pricing scheme is unique under mild conditions.

Numerical results show increased welfare and profitability for MaaS, travelers, and operators.

Abstract

Mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) provides seamless door-to-door trips by integrating different transport modes. Although many MaaS platforms have emerged in recent years, most of them remain at a limited integration level. This study investigates the assignment and pricing problem for a MaaS platform as an intermediary in a multi-modal transportation network, which purchases capacity from service operators and sells multi-modal trips to travelers. The analysis framework of many-to-many stable matching is adopted to decompose the joint design problem and to derive the stability condition such that both operators and travelers are willing to participate in the MaaS system. To maximize the flexibility in route choice and remove boundaries between modes, we design an origin-destination pricing scheme for MaaS trips. On the supply side, we propose a wholesale purchase price for service capacity. Accordingly, the assignment problem is reformulated and solved as a bi-level program, where MaaS travelers make multi-modal trips to minimize their travel costs meanwhile interacting with non-MaaS travelers in the multi-modal transport system. We prove that, under the proposed pricing scheme, there always exists a stable outcome to the overall many-to-many matching problem. Further, given an optimal assignment and under some mild conditions, a unique optimal pricing scheme is ensured. Numerical experiments conducted on the extended Sioux Falls network also demonstrate that the proposed MaaS system could create a win-win-win situation -- the MaaS platform is profitable and both traveler welfare and transit operator revenues increase from a baseline scenario without MaaS.