Optimal Pick up Point Selection for Effective Ride Sharing

Abstract

Car occupancy rates (travelers per vehicle) are currently very low in most developed countries, for example, on average between 1.15 and 1.25 in Australia. Enabling shared rides on short notice can be an effective solution to counter the problem of increasing traffic through the use of the untapped transportation capacity. Common inhibitors for the uptake of ride sharing services are privacy and safety concerns. We present an approach to ride sharing where the pick up/drop off locations for passengers are selected from a fixed set, which has the advantage of increased safety through video surveillance. We present a scheme that chooses optimally fixed locations of Pick up Points (PuPs) and ai..