Strategic customer behavior and optimal policies in a passenger–taxi double-ended queueing system with multiple access points and nonzero matching times

This paper considers an observable double-ended queueing system of passengers and taxis, where matching times follow an exponential distribution. We assume that passengers are strategic and decide to join the queue only if their expected utility is nonnegative. We show that the strategy of passengers is represented by a unique vector of thresholds corresponding to different cases of the number of taxis observed in the system upon passenger arrival. Furthermore, we develop a heuristic algorithm to find an optimal range of fees to be levied on passengers to maximize social welfare or revenues.