Delay strategies in a competitive transportation system
Abstract
Occurrence of competition for available resources is natural among agents in any given system. In order to maximize personal gain, an agent utilizes various strategies designed to benefit his own interests. In this study, we consider N public utility vehicle drivers as the agents aiming to maximize their individual net income (I) in a transportation system with finite resources (passengers). Two cases are analyzed: (1) non-competitive and (2) competitive loading cases. An optimum delay strategy for an agent exists depending on the number of competitors and their respective strategy. An agent's I decreases slowly as N increases for the non-competitive case. On the other hand, I decays sharply with N for the competitive case.