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Computing and Visualizing Taxi Cab Dynamics as Proxies for Autonomous Mobility on Demand Systems

The Case of the Chicago Taxi Cab System

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Computer-Aided Architectural Design. "Hello, Culture" (CAAD Futures 2019)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1028))

Abstract

Despite the expansion of shared mobility-on-demand (MoD) systems as sustainable modes of urban transport, a growing debate among planners and urban scientists regarding what constitutes cost and how to compute it, divides opinions on the benefits that autonomous MoD systems may bring. We present a comprehensive definition of cost of traveling by MoD systems as the cost of the vehicle hours (VH), the vehicle-hours-traveled (VHT), the vehicle-hours-dispatched (VHD), and the vehicle-hours-parked (VHP) required to serve a pattern of trips. Next, we discuss an approach to estimate empty (dispatch) trips and idle periods from a user trip dataset. Finally, we model, compute, and visualize the relationship between the dynamics of VHP, VHT, and VHD using Chicago’s taxi cab system as a case. Our results show that the total fleet of taxis in Chicago can decrease by 51% if all trips, currently served by conventional taxis, were served by autonomous ones.

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Acknowledgments

The research presented in this paper has been partially funded by UNCC’s Faculty Research Grant (funding cycle 2018-2019). The Chicago taxi trip dataset is publicly available and can be downloaded via the Socrata Open Data API through the following link: https://dev.socrata.com/foundry/data.cityofchicago.org/wrvz-psew. Figure 2 credits: Atefeh Mahdavi Goloujeh.

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  1. University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, 28223, USA

    Dimitris Papanikolaou

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  1. Dimitris Papanikolaou
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Correspondence to Dimitris Papanikolaou .

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  1. Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Korea (Republic of)

    Ji-Hyun Lee

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Papanikolaou, D. (2019). Computing and Visualizing Taxi Cab Dynamics as Proxies for Autonomous Mobility on Demand Systems. In: Lee, JH. (eds) Computer-Aided Architectural Design. "Hello, Culture". CAAD Futures 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1028. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8410-3_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8410-3_14

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  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-8410-3

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