A user equilibrium assignment model with ridesharing

In this paper, we propose a path-based user equilibrium assignment model with ridesharing to study the impact of ridesharing activities on traffic assignment problem. In the proposed ridesharing user equilibrium model, travelers not only choose routes from origin to destination, but also decide transportation modes to minimize travelers_generalized path travel cost. The proposed model is more realistic than the existing ones on account of two additional assumptions: 1) each passenger is carried by only one ridesharing driver and each driver share a ride with one rider; 2) due to ridesharing activities, both ridesharing drivers and passengers receive an extra ridesharing rewards, passengers gain ridesharing cost discount. We analyze the impacts of key parameters on equilibrium results in the Braess network. The numerical results show that ridesharing rewards and cost discount are effective measures to motivate travelers to participate in ridesharing activities.