Emerging phenomena like UBER, Car2Go, Enjoy, etc. are examples of the increasing trend towards a sharing of mobility resources. What are the effects of this trend on urban traffic? In principle, a better utilization of mobility resources (vehicles, bikes, etc.) hints to a more sustainable urban traffic, but can we provide a quantification of these benefits at the city level?
To address this and related questions, jointly with MIT Senseable City Lab, we have introduced a novel, network-based approach to the analysis of massive mobility data sets called shareability network. Shareability networks are a mathematical model of ride sharing opportunities between passengers, and enjoy the key feature of being highly scalable. This feature allows analyzing massive data sets, like that composed of the over 150 million trips performed by New York taxis in 2011. Our study has disclosed immense potential for ride sharing in the city of New York: more than 95% can be shared with minimal passenger discomfort, resulting in a potential 30% reduction of taxi-related traffic.
We are now extending the analysis to other cities, as well as other transportation modes.
For more information, see http://hubcab.org, http://www.mobiwallet-project.eu, http://www.cnr.it/sitocnr/video_view.html?id_video=3565,
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