# Topological universality of on-demand ride-sharing efficiency

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a universal measure of ride-sharing efficiency that follows a scaling law across diverse street network topologies, aiding the transferability and evaluation of ride-sharing services in various regions.

## Contribution

It derives a generic efficiency measure based on intrinsic ride-sharing dynamics, demonstrating its universality across different network topologies and demand conditions.

## Key findings

- Efficiency measure follows a universal scaling law.
- Scaling law holds across diverse street network topologies.
- Efficiency measure is insensitive to demand and dispatching variations.

## Abstract

Ride-sharing may substantially contribute to future-compliant sustainable mobility, both in urban and rural areas. The service quality of ride-sharing fleets jointly depends on the topology of the underlying street networks, the spatio-temporal demand distributions, and the dispatching algorithms. Yet, efficiency of ride-sharing services is typically quantified by economic or ecological ad-hoc measures that do not transfer to new service regions with different characteristics. Here we derive a generic measure of ride-sharing efficiency based on the intrinsic ride-sharing dynamics that follows a universal scaling law across network topologies. We demonstrate that the same scaling holds across street networks of distinct topologies, including cities, islands and rural areas, and is insensitive to modifying request distributions and dispatching criteria. These results further our understanding of the collective dynamics of ride-sharing fleets and may enable quantitative evaluation of conditions towards increasing the feasibility of creating or transferring ride-sharing services to previously unserviced regions.