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3,000 Ride-Sharing Cars Could Replace Every Cab in New York City, MIT Study Says (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.

All 13,000 taxis in New York City could be replaced by a fleet of 3,000 ride-sharing cars if used exclusively for carpooling, according to research published today by MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). From a report: Instead of hailing taxis, passengers that use ride-sharing services for carpooling may lead to reduced traffic congestion, pollution, and fuel use. The CSAIL researchers used public data from NYC taxi rides published by the University of Illinois to develop the algorithm. They calculated that 3,000 four-person vehicles travelling to similar destinations could meet 98 percent of taxi demand in the city with an average wait time of 2.7 minutes. Perhaps the most important part of the system is a dynamic repositioning of vehicles based on real-time demand, which makes the system 20 percent faster.

16 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. But I don't want to ride with others by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The major selling point of a taxi is that the backseat is all mine. Now I have to share a car with two other people, or a van with how many people?

    No thanks.

    1. Re: But I don't want to ride with others by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Agree. I hate carpooling. I absolutely hate it.

      Hate getting involved when the other cheapo customer get pissed off with the driver when I think it was fine.

      Hate the car turning back near the original pickup location to pickup someone else after we left for 10 mins.

      I'll rather pay more.

      I love Uber, but I HATE Uberpool.

    2. Re:But I don't want to ride with others by Spazmania · · Score: 4, Insightful

      New York City has plenty of great public transportation options for folks who are willing to ride with others. Cabs are for the times when you're not.

      --
      Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
    3. Re:But I don't want to ride with others by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Absolutely. It will come down to costs.

      Do you want to pay $22 for a human driving private cab or $10 (or even less) for a shared car.

      People will be free to choose their option so everyone wins.

      People do astonishing things for a few pennies. Give up their privacy. Queue up for an an extra 40 minutes. Shop on certain days. Buy two of a product when they are barely likely to use one.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    4. Re:But I don't want to ride with others by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 2

      I always considered the main selling point of the Taxi was the sweet-smelling driver, impeccable upholstery, and the stimulating-eloquent dialogue with the well-spoken man being the wheel.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    5. Re: But I don't want to ride with others by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Funny

      Off topic. This is a story about NYC cabs, so your fart will be totally overwhelmed by the baseline smell of the cab.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    6. Re: But I don't want to ride with others by RubberDogBone · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I love Uber, but I HATE Uberpool.

      Does Uberpool make them more money?

      They were pushing it pretty hard before. For a while I had to spend 10-30 seconds to get out of the uberpool offer attempts and order a regular Uber.

      As an Uber driver, Pool makes Uber money mainly because the pay to the driver is MUCH lower. And this matters because Uber has had to subsidize what drivers are paid versus the fare charged to riders. This is why Uber is losing so much money. Pool rides charge significantly lower fares and pay the drivers far less.

      Meanwhile it does two useful things for Uber: One, it keeps the riders using Uber versus a competing service or transport method. They want that mindshare lock. Two, it keeps the Uber drivers busy and saturated with work in many cases, which keeps them out on the roads and makes them available for other pool riders or Uber Eats or XL services. Uber's biggest weakness is not having cars available when riders want them so this helps address that.

      Uber Eats is Pool for food and it's getting a huge push. It sucks for drivers because you end up stuck at restaurants waiting for food to be ready. Restaurants HATE IT because the Uber tablets nag them to accept the order and immediately dispatch a driver to pick it up long before the food is ready, and if the restaurant does not acknowledge the order in a hurry, Uber starts calling them to nag. Uber Eats also pays drivers a pittance and we end up with bad reviews because the food is cold, which is not our fault. They stack multiple order pick ups and we have to wait wait wait for all of them to be ready, so even if one order IS ready, we have to wait for the next one. And we're sitting there making zero money while all this goes on.

      And then the food stinks up the car which makes human riders mad.

      Meanwhile. Pool is a disaster for drivers who could make, say $15 on an XL run would instead make $3.75 on a Pool ride, both being before gas and taxes are taken out. I've had Pool riders where the trip generated under two dollars to me. Less than bus fare! And that was on a 15 mile trip pickup from the airport far out in the suburbs. With the fuel cost, I absolutely lost money on that run. And it should be noted, Drivers has no idea what the destination is or the fare until after they have picked up the rider. So I didn't know I would only be paid two bucks or even WHY only two bucks.

      Additionally, there is a lot of confusion among riders on what Pool even means. I picked up a couple going to the airport with luggage. They were under a time constraint to make their flight. Not normally an issue but they had chosen Pool because they had two people and figured that's what you do when you have two people. They had no idea what Pool meant.

      Uber immediately paired up these travellers with a sweaty man going home from the gym. It was on our way but it added at least 15 minutes to the trip due to really bad traffic I could have otherwise avoided. It threatened to make these people late and caused a lot of concern. It definitely did make them very unhappy as they'd wanted a fast ride to the airport and got a smelly shared ride with a man who also got angry that the other people were mad at him. The car was also totally full of people and luggage and gym bags at that point so nobody enjoyed any of it and I had a car full of pissed off people.

      I could not cancel Gym Dude before pickup because that would affect my ratings and anyway Uber would just assign another Pool rider to me, maybe worse than the one I had. I could not expedite the airport drop off because Gym Dude was on the way, technically, even if his side trip dragged us into bad traffic. Everybody ended up unhappy on that run, through zero fault of mine. I got one star rated by both parties and of course no tips.

      So I contacted Uber Support and demanded to be let out of Pool. I don't need passengers almost fighting in my car over something I can'

      --
      Sig for hire.
  2. It makes sense in NYC by SumDog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This makes a ton of sense in NYC which is already saturated with high capacity rail systems. If you made these car share vehicles self driving and electric, you have the potential for an amazing last leg solution.

    Ride sharing (zip cars, and eventually automated vehicles) will be the future, but people do need to be aware in such a future, people will most likely not "own" cars any longer. But for this to work, they can only be a last leg. Ride shares and self driving cars will NOT solve the transportation gridlock problem. Cars simply do not have the capacity of real public transit:

    http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the-transportation-problem/

  3. Drunk people create jobs. by geekmux · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "All 13,000 taxis in New York City could be replaced by a fleet of 3,000 ride-sharing cars..."

    Gee, I wonder how many jobs that will create in this new glorious economy.

    "...if used exclusively for carpooling."

    That's one hell of a caveat to put on these efficiency metrics, given the amount of times drunk people not needing a carpool to work use taxi cabs.

    1. Re:Drunk people create jobs. by edtice1559 · · Score: 2

      Cabs and shared rides (I assume similar to UberPool) are a point-to-point service. No walking at either end. And 2.7 minute wait is much better than the average wait for a bus/subway. Plus with apps you know when the car is arriving so you can wait inside until the car is a minute or so away. With the bus you have to stand out in the weather for an unpredictable amount of time. Of course buses could also be improved this way. Better route maps (Google Maps does a good job) and real-time updates on when the bus is coming. Also buses get overcrowded and people have to stand up crushed next to each other. Even with a shared ride you're guaranteed a seat. What we're really talking about here are four-person buses (maybe five or six-person once they are self-driving) that are way more convenient. So this really is like the bus without all of the problems of the bus.

  4. Re:MIT math? by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's already 35,000+ uber drivers in nyc.

    http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/11/news/companies/uber-new-york-city-union/

    Yes, but they're not following MIT's mathematical model. They're following real life supply and demand, the bastards. If they stop listening to supply and demand and start following mathematical models of where people theoretically should want to go, we would only need 3,000 of them.

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  5. Isn't this just reinventing the bus? by jfdavis668 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sounds like they just came up with a plan to use a bunch of smaller buses to replace taxis. What a novel concept.

  6. Yes- non-fixed route, fixed schedule- buses by Immerial · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This could work... only if people would let it. The main complaint I see is ... but I don't want to sit with a stranger. What if these 3000 cars had individual compartments... complete with a comfy chair, newspaper/video of your choice, and a coffee? That might be enough for some folks. That plus having them dynamically allocated means not having to wait long and if you miss it/run late, schedule another one to pick you up.

    1. Re:Yes- non-fixed route, fixed schedule- buses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's more to the point that rarely are people coming and going from IDENTICAL spots, isn't it?

      And if I've just grabbed a cab, I'm obviously not wanting to wait 5 or 10 minutes to pick up the next 1 or 2 people even if they're within a few blocks, and same at the drop-off.

      Sure, it happens people come and go from the SAME spot and are literally outside at the SAME time - in fact, I'd be happy if the algorithm popped up a message "hey that dude next to you is in your same boat, want to split this?"

      But otherwise, fuck that extra 10-20 minutes, I could've taken a bus.

  7. Say goodbye to a lot of tax revenue by RogueWarrior65 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Medallions cost around $1 million each. Do you really think a ten billion dollar asset is just going to roll over and play dead?

  8. Math by darkain · · Score: 2

    Well, let's simplify... 12,000 / 4 = 3000... Holyshit, I just figured out their entire study!