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Taxis By Algorithm: Streamlining City Transport With Graph Theory
New submitter Mark Buchanan (3595113) writes with a story about research from scientists at MIT, Cornell and elsewhere showing "that big city taxi systems could be made 40% more efficient with device-enabled taxi sharing. We could cut miles driven, costs, and pollution with the right application of just data and algorithms, and do it while introducing no more than a 5 minute delay to any person's trip. " Letting such algorithms compete seems an excellent reason to encourage, rather than reject by law, ride-coordination services like Uber and Lyft.
I don't want to share my cab.
Letting such agorithms compete seems an excellent reason to encourage, rather than reject by law, ride-coordination services like Uber and Lyft.
Taxi licensing laws aren't about giving the CUSTOMERS good service. They're about limiting competition so the licensed cab owners have a regulated oligopoly that limits competition and keeps the prices higher than market-clearing.
It's much like the laws limiting car sales to dealers that are giving Tesla such a problem.
This is crony capitalism at its most blatant.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
In Turkey, I saw even better thing. Idea is this: public transport bus is too slow and awkward: stops are either sparse - lots of walking, or dense - making traveling too slow, and taxi for single person is too expensive (fuel + driver). In Turkey these is this "Dolmush" thing, which is mini-bus, that stops anywhere (like Taxi), costs fix rate (like public transport) and is just practical. It kicks ass of all other forms of public transport *AND* computerized car/taxi sharing.
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This can reduce waiting times in "taxi rush hour" - would you prefer to wait 15 minutes for "your own" taxi, or share one that comes in 5 minute?
Also, if the cab carries two different passengers, cab drivers get payment from each.
In Athens, Greece, the cabs that carry one passenger might stop and take another one that goes in the same direction (and get full payment from one passenger and partial or full payment from the other). It helps a lot with the "I can't find a cab at this time" problem.
less wasted time and fuel on empty cabs...
There was a pilot for this program 4 years ago in NYC:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02...
Also there was strike that mandated it 7 years ago for a few days.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09...
In short, no one liked it. If people wanted to have a delayed trip and people with them, they'd just take the Subway.
The law is a cab is legally bound to take you anywhere in the five boroughs, whether they want to or not. Of course, if you tell them where you want to go before you get in, there's not much you can do to force the issue, except maybe getting their plate number and report it, which you probably won't do anyway. So savvy NYers don't give up the destination until they're in the cab.
Long story short, a system that requires you provide both the pickup AND arrival points will require some serious clampdowns to keep uptowners and outer-borough folk from being left out in the cold.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
It's a Prisoner's Dilemma situation. If everybody were willing to wait the 5 minutes, that would be better for everybody. But the ideal situation for an individual is if everybody else shares while they themselves do not, thus avoiding even the 5 minute wait. Each person acting in their best interest individually leads to a poor outcome for everybody.
The bus is the same. If everybody decided (at once) to start riding the bus, it would be faster than everybody driving cars because there would be so little congestion on the streets, and so many bus routes. But since only a few people take the bus, the busses slog thorough the congestion, AND (being busses) have to stop all the time. So the situation persists.
As far as cabbies are concerned, the optimum algorithm will be whatever maximises their revenue. Any algorithm that doesn't will probably be vulnerable to cheating, i.e. a rogue cabbie that can make more money exploiting some aspect of the algorithm will do so.