Dynamic demand estimation for an AMoD system in Paris

A simulation framework is presented that equilibrates a given automated taxi fleet with (a) consistent prices to provide the service and (b) customer behaviour that reacts to costs and level of service alike. In a first attempt, a hypothetical AMoD service within the highway ring of Paris is considered. The “dynamic demand” case yields a demand of around 1.2M trips per day for such a service at the optimal fleet size of 25k vehicles. This number is considerably lower than 2.3M trips that potentially could be served in a “static maximum demand” case which has often been used as a basis for previous fleet sizing studies. While the authors acknowledge a multitude of assumptions that constitute the present model, clear pathways to its improvement, methodologically and data-wise, are provided.