Private autonomous vehicles may sit unused for much of the day while other people cannot find a ride. A platform could recruit some of those vehicles, pay their owners for availability or service, and charge passengers for completed trips. Supply would then come partly from assets already owned by households.
Idle private vehicles and unserved customers first appear in the same area. A platform then offers money to owners who join; their vehicles serve riders, and fares flow back to the platform when pickups occur. In the last act, owner payments and passenger prices change, affecting fleet participation, completed orders, and platform profit. The key insight is a two-sided response. Paying owners more can attract capacity, but increases expense; charging riders more can raise revenue per trip, but weaken demand. A viable policy must balance both sides rather than optimizing one fee while holding the other side fixed.
An available taxi is useful to passengers even while it is carrying nobody. More idle vehicles spread through a service area make pickup faster, reducing the delay between requesting a ride and entering a car. Keeping those vehicles available, however, costs driver time and money.
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One ride has two different clocks. For the passenger, the trip begins with a request and includes waiting to be matched, waiting for the assigned car to arrive, and riding to the destination. For the driver, the service cycle begins while available, continues through pickup and transport, and ends only when the car is ready for another match.
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An on-demand car, a shared ride, and a fixed-route bus use vehicles very differently. An exclusive car offers direct travel but spends substantial time and distance on each passenger. Pooling shares some of that work at the cost of detours and coordination. A bus gains scale when enough people use a common corridor, but offers less flexible access.
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