S.E.R.G. WP Series #08-2025: "Impact of Dynamic Pricing on the Performance of Shared Automated Vehicles in Mobility as a Service: A Systematic Review"

2025 - Elias Zigah, Adam Abdin and Isabelle Nicolai

Urban population growth intensifies the demand for efficient, accessible, sustainable public transportation. Traditional modes often lack the flexibility modern commuters seek, leading to integrating on-demand services like shared automated vehicles (SAVs) into mobility as a Service (MaaS) platform. Despite numerous SAV experiments globally, applying classical public transport pricing policies to SAVs within MaaS hinders profitability and delays industrial deployment. While dynamic pricing has optimised revenue and resource allocation in industries like airlines and ride-hailing services, its application in public transportation with SAVs remains underexplored. Dynamic pricing strategies must balance varied and sometimes contradictory performance objectives: profitability and affordability, reliability, and environmental friendliness. We conduct a systematic review to examine how dynamic pricing influences the performance of SAVs in MaaS. The findings suggest dynamic pricing offers immense potential for sustainable profitability and operational
efficiency in public transportation services. However, it also reveals trade-offs between revenue maximisation and user affordability, as dynamic pricing may increase costs for low income users during peak periods. Our findings emphasise the need for advanced pricing algorithms that can rapidly adapt to changes in customers’ willingness to pay while balancing economic objectives with operational and social impacts.

Dynamic pricing; Surge pricing; Ride-hailing; Ride-sharing; Autonomous vehicles; MaaS.