Ride-sharing, carpooling and traffic congestion
Traffic is not just a nuisance for drivers: it’s also a public-health hazard and bad news for the economy.
Transportation studies put the annual cost of congestion at $160 billion, which includes 7 billion hours of time lost to sitting in traffic and an extra 3 billion gallons of fuel burned.
One way to improve traffic is through ride-sharing – and a new MIT study suggests that using carpooling options from companies like Uber and Lyft could reduce the number of vehicles on the road 75 percent without significantly impacting travel time.
Led by Professor Daniela Rus of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), researchers developed an algorithm that found that 3,000 four-passenger cars could serve 98 percent of taxi demand in New York City, with an average wait-time of only 2.7 minutes.
“Instead of transporting people one at a time, drivers could transport two to four people at once, results in fewer trips, in less time, to make the same amount of money,” says Rus, who wrote a related paper with former CSAIL postdoc Javier Alonso-Mora, assistant professor Samitha Samaranayake of Cornell University, PhD student Alex Wallar and MIT professor Emilio Frazzoli. “A system like this could allow drivers to work shorter shifts, while also creating less traffic, cleaner air and shorter, less stressful commutes.”
The team also found that 95 percent of demand would be covered by just 2,000 ten-person vehicles, compared to the nearly 14,000 taxis that currently operate in New York City.
Using data from 3 million taxi rides, the new algorithm works in real-time to reroute cars based on incoming requests, and can also proactively send idle cars to areas with high demand – a step that speeds up service 20 percent, according to Rus.
“To our knowledge, this is the first time that scientists have been able to experimentally quantify the trade-off between fleet size, capacity, waiting time, travel delay, and operational costs for a range of vehicles, from taxis to vans and shuttles,” says Rus. “What’s more, the system is particularly suited to autonomous cars, since it can continuously reroute vehicles based on real-time requests.”
The team’s article was published in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences (PNAS).
A future of carpool tunnels
While the concept of carpooling has been around for decades, it’s only in the last two years that services like Uber and Lyft have leveraged smartphone data in a way that has made ride-sharing a cheap, convenient option. (In 2015 Lyft reported that half of its San Francisco trips were carpools.)
However, existing approaches are still limited in their complexity. For example, some ride-sharing systems require that user B be on the way for user A, and need to have all the requests submitted before they can create a route.
In contrast, the new system allows requests to be rematched to different vehicles. It can also analyze a range of different types of vehicles to determine, say, where or when a 10-person van would be of the greatest benefit.
The system works by first creating a graph of all of the requests and all of the vehicles. It then creates a second graph of all possible trip combinations, and uses a method called “integer linear programming” to compute the best assignment of vehicles to trips.
After cars are assigned, the algorithm can then rebalance the remaining idle vehicles by sending them to higher-demand areas.
“A key challenge was to develop a real-time solution that considers the thousands of vehicles and requests at once,” says Rus. “We can do this in our method because that first step enables us to understand and abstract the road network at a fine level of detail.”
The final product is what Rus calls an “anytime optimal algorithm,” which means that it gets better the more times you run it – and she says that she’s eager to see how much it can improve with further refinement.
“Ride-sharing services have enormous potential for positive societal impact with respect to congestion, pollution and energy consumption,” says Rus. “It’s important that we as researchers do everything we can to explore ways to make these transportation systems as efficient and reliable as possible.”
Learn more: STUDY: CARPOOLING APPS COULD REDUCE TRAFFIC 75%
[osd_subscribe categories=’ride-sharing’ placeholder=’Email Address’ button_text=’Subscribe Now for any new posts on the topic “RIDE-SHARING”‘]
Receive an email update when we add a new RIDE-SHARING article.
The Latest on: Ride-sharing, carpooling and traffic congestion
[google_news title=”” keyword=”ride-sharing, carpooling and traffic congestion” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Ride-sharing, carpooling and traffic congestion
- Congestion pricing is good for NYC’s rideshareon April 24, 2024 at 6:00 am
New York is becoming a less welcoming city for cars. That’s a good thing. The final plan for congestion pricing, the new tolling structure for vehicles entering Manhattan south of 60th St. was ...
- 10 Best Cars for Uber and Lyft Drivers To Be Successfulon April 18, 2024 at 11:18 am
Avoid These 7 Cars That Will Only Last You Half as Long as the Average VehicleRead Next: 6 Genius Things All Wealthy People Do With Their Money Although Lyft and Uber operators are required to meet ...
- 10 Best Cars for Uber and Lyft Drivers To Be Successfulon April 18, 2024 at 11:18 am
As consumers look to avoid the large overhead costs of car ownership, traffic congestion and limited city parking, the ride-sharing market ... overall success as a rideshare driver.
- NJ will get a share of congestion pricing money, MTA chair announceson April 18, 2024 at 4:45 am
New Jersey will get a share of the money when Manhattan’s congestion pricing plan goes into effect this summer, MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber announced Wednesday. Lieber didn’t specify how much, ...
- New York City braces for congestion pricing that’s expected to improve traffic, pollution, and moreon April 10, 2024 at 5:00 pm
New York City is poised to launch the first congestion pricing plan to reduce traffic in a major U.S ... and motorcycles $7.50. Ride-share vehicles and taxis will pay $2.50 and $1.25, respectively.
- New York City greenlights congestion pricing – here’s how this toll plan is expected to improve traffic, air quality and public transiton April 9, 2024 at 5:00 pm
John Rennie Short, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (THE CONVERSATION) New York City is poised to launch the first congestion pricing plan to reduce traffic ... $7.50. Ride-share vehicles ...
- Should consumers be worried as surge pricing spreads from ride-sharing to fast food?on April 1, 2024 at 2:15 am
Have you ever opened a ride-sharing app during ... are now implementing congestion pricing, a form of surge pricing where tolls rise dynamically based on real-time traffic levels.
- These US Cities Will Soon Have Access to Uber’s Most Affordable Ride Optionon May 10, 2023 at 10:08 am
Last summer, Uber’s announcement of the return of its most affordable ride ... in traffic congestion and air pollution due to the increasing popularity of shared rides. However, the carpooling ...
- Carpooling: Unclog That Congestionon December 13, 2019 at 4:00 pm
Traffic congestion ... Ride-hailing platforms or cab aggregators are growing exponentially, however, commuters are not immune to cab unavailability, surge pricing and cancellations. Carpooling ...
via Bing News