Efficient Mobility-on-Demand System with Ride-Sharing

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel clustering algorithm for mobility-on-demand systems that leverages road network structure, improving vehicle efficiency and customer service by incorporating predicted demand into trip assignment.

Contribution

The paper introduces a network partition algorithm that enhances ride-sharing efficiency by considering future travel demand, outperforming reactive control policies.

Findings

Fewer vehicles are needed to serve the same demand.

Including predicted demand increases customer coverage.

Slightly longer wait times are acceptable for higher efficiency.

Abstract

An algorithm to cluster mobility-on-demand trips considering road network structure is developed in this paper. The benefits of our network partition algorithm are demonstrated in numerical simulations, showing that we can use fewer vehicles and can serve more customers with slightly longer wait time by including predicted future travel demand in trip assignment, compared with the benchmark reactive control policy.