Joint resource exchange and pricing for intercity multimodal transport systems

Intercity multimodal transportation systems hold great promise for enhancing travel, boosting regional economies, and promoting sustainability. However, realizing their full potential hinges on effective cooperation among transport service providers (TSPs), which current practices often lack. This study proposes a novel framework to address this challenge by leveraging price competition through mobility resource exchange. Our framework considers both independent TSP operations and collaborative resource sharing, incorporating the price elasticity of demand to determine optimal resource exchange and pricing strategies. Through comprehensive analysis of Nash equilibrium outcomes under various capacity conditions, we identify strategies that maximize total profit for participating TSPs. Furthermore, we introduce an ex-post revenue sharing rule to ensure equitable profit allocation among alliance members. Our analytical findings prove that a resource exchange alliance consistently outperforms a no alliance scenario in terms of total profit, particularly in competitive markets with ample resources. Remarkably, the alliance can even achieve the first-best profit level, typically attainable only through perfect coordination. Numerical studies using real-world data further validate the viability of the proposed resource exchange framework. Results demonstrate that a resource exchange alliance not only ensures equitable benefit distribution but also consistently enhances profits across all price elasticity scenarios, highlighting its potential to revolutionize intercity multimodal transportation.