Equilibrium Model of Urban Taxi Service Network with the Influence of Taxi-hailing Applications

In order to reflect the effect of taxi-hailing applications on taxi market, this paper proposes an equilibrium model of urban taxi service network with the mutual influences of private cars, buses and taxis. All taxis are divided into two modes: one is the dispatch service mode that utilizing the taxi- hailing applications for the communication between passengers and taxi drivers, and the other is the cruise service mode taxi whose passengers didn't use it. Then, the differences of two modes in passengers'waiting time and the selection probability of vacancy taxi are quantized. Based on Wardrop's principle, a variational inequality model can be equivalent to taxi equilibrium model and the heuristic algorithm is build. The results of numerical example indicate that taxi-hailing apps make a great contribution to needs, but the proportion of dispatch service mode taxi is decreased when the taxi scale increased. Furthermore,taxi vacancy ratio of dispatch service mode taxi is lower than the other. The results confirm the marginal benefit of taxi-hailing