Some empirical laws of ride-pooling services

Abstract

Three key measures distinguish ride-pooling service analysis from non-pooling ride-sourcing market analysis. The first measure is the proportion of passengers who are pool-matched (denoted the pool-matching probability), the second measure is passengers' average detour distance and the third measure is the average vehicle routing distance required to pick up and drop off all passengers with different origins and destinations in a given ride. Due to the complex nature of the ride-sourcing market, it is difficult to analytically determine the relationships between these measures and passenger demand. This chapter ascertains these relationships through extensive experiments using actual on-demand mobility data obtained from Chengdu and Haikou (China) and Manhattan, New York City (USA). Interestingly, this reveals that simple curves are a good fit for these relationships, demonstrating that they are effectively described by empirical laws.