The focus of Transportation Research: Part C (TR_C) is high-quality, scholarly research that addresses development, applications, and implications, in the field of transportation systems and emerging technologies . The interest is not in the individual technologies per se, but in their ultimate implications for the planning, design, operation, control, maintenance and rehabilitation of transportation systems, services and components. In other words, the intellectual core of the journal is on the transportation side, not on the technology side. The integration of quantitative methods from fields such as operations research, control systems, complex networks, computer science, artificial intelligence are encouraged.

Of particular interest are the impacts of emerging technologies on transportation system performance, in terms of monitoring, efficiency, safety, reliability, resource consumption and the environment. Submissions in the following areas of transportation are welcome: multimodal and intermodal transportation; on-demand transport; intelligent transportation systems; traffic and demand management; real-time operations; connected and autonomous vehicles; logistics; railways; resource and infrastructure management; aviation; pedestrians and soft modes.

Special emphasis is given in open science initiatives and promoting the opening of large-scale datasets for papers published in TR_C that can support transferability and benchmarking of different approaches. The realization of data opportunities that arise from emerging technologies and new sensors in transportation can revolutionize how this data reshape our understanding of congestion mechanisms and can contribute in efficient and sustainable mobility management.

Special Issue on The economics of platform-based mobility and logistics services
Submission Date: 2024-10-30

Over the past decade, the rise of platform-based mobility and logistics services has fundamentally reshaped transport systems worldwide. Whether transporting passengers, delivering small goods, or both, they transitioned from being seminal small companies to becoming part of the backbone of our cities. This rapid development introduced an array of novel challenges, concerns, and fresh avenues for research. One of the principal characteristics distinguishing such services from traditional ones is their economics. In the first place, their economic structure involves interactions between several market participants

Guest editors:

1) Dr. Andres Fielbaum, The University of Sydney; andres.fielbaum@sydney.edu.au
2) Dr. Kenan Zhang, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne;kenan.zhang@epfl.ch 
3) Dr. Lewis Lehe, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign;lehe@illinois.edu 
4) Dr. Daniel Vignon, New York University;daniel.vignon@nyu.edu 
5) Dr. Zhengtian Xu, George Washington University;zhengtian@gwu.edu 

Special issue information:

Indeed, unlike traditional markets in which supply and demand interact directly, these services are managed by a mediating platform that helps overcome friction between consumers and suppliers by connecting them with drivers or riders. Each of these up to four parties (consumers, suppliers, platform, and drivers) has specific interests and access to varied, often fragmented, information. In the second place, the economics of these services are fundamentally affected by the on-demand nature of their operations. Both demand and supply adjust dynamically to market conditions. As such, platforms must make frequent decisions and adapt to current conditions while managing uncertainties about the future.

The growth of these platforms has led to a widening array of regulatory efforts. However, these regulations often have unexpected consequences due to the complexity of the systems and the lack of sufficient economic knowledge about them. Similarly, we are witnessing rapid changes in the market structure attendant to these services and the behaviour of the different participants involved. Current studies have not sufficed to capture the complexity of platform-based on-demand services, so we welcome manuscripts that identify novel problems, propose better methodologies, or discover new strategies to ensure economic efficiency.

Specific topics of interest include but are not limited to:

- Coopetition, monopolies, and equilibrium dynamics
- Demand/supply integration and differentiation across platforms
- Strategic behaviour of drivers, passengers, and the platforms
- Regulation, subsidies, and taxes
- Pricing strategies to users and payment strategies to the other parties
- Information structure and multi-sided markets
- Game theoretical modeling for consumers, suppliers, platform, and drivers
- Experimental economics of platform-based mobility and logistics services
- Dynamic pricing and incentives in platforms
- Platform competition and market concentration effects
- Regulatory challenges and opportunities for platforms
- Economics of vehicle fleet electrification in platforms
- Network effects and externalities of platforms
- Resilience and robustness of platforms under uncertainty

Manuscript submission information:

All submissions for this special issue should be submitted to the Transportation Research Part C online submission system and will go through the journal’s standard peer-review process. For the guidelines for manuscript preparation and submission, please visit site:

When submitting your manuscript, please choose “VSI: VSI:platform-based mobility" “Article type”. This is to ensure that your submission will be considered for this Special Issue instead of being handled as a regular paper.

Submission deadline is 30th October 2024

Keywords:

Transport Economics, Transport Platforms, On-demand, On-demand Mobility, Ride-hailing, Ride-pooling, Ride-sharing, Delivery, Drivers behaviour