Designing Dynamic Pricing for Bike-sharing Systems via Differentiable Agent-based Simulation

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Mitomi, Tatsuya, Makinoshima, Fumiyasu, Makihara, Fumiya, Segawa, Eigo
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Mitomi, Tatsuya
Makinoshima, Fumiyasu
Makihara, Fumiya
Segawa, Eigo
author_facet Mitomi, Tatsuya
Makinoshima, Fumiyasu
Makihara, Fumiya
Segawa, Eigo
contents Bike-sharing systems are emerging in various cities as a new ecofriendly transportation system. In these systems, spatiotemporally varying user demands lead to imbalanced inventory at bicycle stations, resulting in additional relocation costs. Therefore, it is essential to manage user demand through optimal dynamic pricing for the system. However, optimal pricing design for such a system is challenging because the system involves users with diverse backgrounds and their probabilistic choices. To address this problem, we develop a differentiable agent-based simulation to rapidly design dynamic pricing in bike-sharing systems, achieving balanced bicycle inventory despite spatiotemporally heterogeneous trips and probabilistic user decisions. We first validate our approach against conventional methods through numerical experiments involving 25 bicycle stations and five time slots, yielding 100 parameters. Compared to the conventional methods, our approach obtains a more accurate solution with a 73% to 78% reduction in loss while achieving more than a 100-fold increase in convergence speed. We further validate our approach on a large-scale urban bike-sharing system scenario involving 289 bicycle stations, resulting in a total of 1156 parameters. Through simulations using the obtained pricing policies, we confirm that these policies can naturally induce balanced inventory without any manual relocation. Additionally, we find that the cost of discounts to induce the balanced inventory can be minimized by setting appropriate initial conditions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_23344
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Designing Dynamic Pricing for Bike-sharing Systems via Differentiable Agent-based Simulation
Mitomi, Tatsuya
Makinoshima, Fumiyasu
Makihara, Fumiya
Segawa, Eigo
Machine Learning
Multiagent Systems
Bike-sharing systems are emerging in various cities as a new ecofriendly transportation system. In these systems, spatiotemporally varying user demands lead to imbalanced inventory at bicycle stations, resulting in additional relocation costs. Therefore, it is essential to manage user demand through optimal dynamic pricing for the system. However, optimal pricing design for such a system is challenging because the system involves users with diverse backgrounds and their probabilistic choices. To address this problem, we develop a differentiable agent-based simulation to rapidly design dynamic pricing in bike-sharing systems, achieving balanced bicycle inventory despite spatiotemporally heterogeneous trips and probabilistic user decisions. We first validate our approach against conventional methods through numerical experiments involving 25 bicycle stations and five time slots, yielding 100 parameters. Compared to the conventional methods, our approach obtains a more accurate solution with a 73% to 78% reduction in loss while achieving more than a 100-fold increase in convergence speed. We further validate our approach on a large-scale urban bike-sharing system scenario involving 289 bicycle stations, resulting in a total of 1156 parameters. Through simulations using the obtained pricing policies, we confirm that these policies can naturally induce balanced inventory without any manual relocation. Additionally, we find that the cost of discounts to induce the balanced inventory can be minimized by setting appropriate initial conditions.
title Designing Dynamic Pricing for Bike-sharing Systems via Differentiable Agent-based Simulation
topic Machine Learning
Multiagent Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.23344