Coalition Formation in Ridesharing With Walking Options

In this work, we introduce a novel coalition formation mechanism for ridesharing services. Specifically, we extend the current literature to integrate walking options within the trip. This allows us to effectively account for a user’s value of time when walking, which is not negligible. Additionally, we propose a cost allocation method that ensures proportionality for sharing the costs, i.e. those who walk more should pay less. We present a preliminary formal evaluation of the efficacy of our cost allocation method and discuss its desirable properties. Our study is a step towards developing smart mobility systems that recommend optimal ridesharing coalitions to users and suggest cost allocations that accounts for the marginal cost and contributions of each rider.