Ride-pooling services and traffic congestion

Abstract

It is generally considered that a well-designed on-demand ride-pooling service can reduce the vehicle fleet size required to satisfy a given level of passenger demand and thus achieve a variety of societally beneficial objectives, such as decreased traffic congestion. In turn, this decreases the travel time of ride-sourcing passengers and other road users. Accordingly, this chapter examines the extent to which a ride-pooling service can decrease traffic congestion and people's travel time by establishing an analytical model for ride-pooling services in the presence of traffic congestion. The model confirms that a ride-pooling service can indeed create a win–win situation for ride-sourcing passengers and other road users. The chapter also discusses optimisation of the matching-time window for pool-matching.