A Public Transportation Reservation System for Congestion Relief with E-tickets

Tomoaki Takemura, Kazuhiko Iwase, Jieshuo Zhang, Shoko Abe, Tomoyuki Ohkubo, Hisashi Hayashi

Abstract: Existing public transportation reservation systems operate on a first-come-first-served basis, and do not consider mobility priorities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, overcrowding in transportation facilities must be mitigated. However, a limited number of high-priority users such as healthcare workers should be able to commute safely. Moreover, high-priority transportation is also required even for regular passengers in some cases when they really need to move for important reasons. In this study, we propose a new e-ticket reservation system that performs maximum weight matching based on the user priority category, desired time, and virtual-point bidding. Matching is performed separately for each line at each station to reduce computational complexity. This virtual point system allows users to prioritize their travel schedules and easily book necessary transportation. To guarantee fairness, only a limited number of virtual points are distributed to each user, and additional purchases are not allowed. Our system aims to maximize the number of tickets distributed to high-priority users and travelers who spent virtual points while reducing the degree of congestion.