Simulating two-sided mobility platforms with MaaSSim

PLoS One. 2022 Jun 9;17(6):e0269682. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0269682. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Two-sided mobility platforms, such as Uber and Lyft, widely emerged in the urban mobility landscape. Distributed supply of individual drivers, matched with travellers via intermediate platform yields a new class of phenomena not present in urban mobility before. Such disruptive changes to transportation systems call for a simulation framework where researchers from various and across disciplines may introduce models aimed at representing the complex dynamics of platform-driven urban mobility. In this work, we present MaaSSim, a lightweight agent-based simulator reproducing the transport system used by two kinds of agents: (i) travellers, requesting to travel from their origin to destination at a given time, and (ii) drivers supplying their travel needs by offering them rides. An intermediate agent, the platform, matches demand with supply. Agents are individual decision-makers. Specifically, travellers may decide which mode they use or reject an incoming offer; drivers may opt-out from the system or reject incoming requests. All of the above behaviours are modelled through user-defined modules, allowing to represent agents' taste variations (heterogeneity), their previous experiences (learning) and available information (system control). MaaSSim is a flexible open-source python library capable of realistically reproducing complex interactions between agents of a two-sided mobility platform. MaaSSim is available from a public repository, along with a set of tutorials and reproducible use-case scenarios, as demonstrated with a series of illustrative examples and a comprehensive case study.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Transportation*
  • Travel*

Grants and funding

The research conducted by OC and RK was supported by the CriticalMaaS project (no. 804469) which is financed by the European Research Council and the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.