A Congestion-Aware Transfer Scheduling Method for Ride-Sharing Services

Traffic congestion causes various problems such as lost traffic time and increased exhaust emissions. Ride-sharing services are therefore attracting attention as a potential solution to traffic congestion. By allowing users to share rides with other users, the cost of transportation per person can be reduced. Replacing conventional private vehicle transportation with ride-sharing services reduces the number of vehicles on the road and eliminates traffic congestion. However, as ride-sharing services become more widespread, the demand for transportation that does not exist today will change the face of traffic, and congestion can be expected to occur due to factors different from those that exist today. One such factor is the increase in traffic volume on roads around destinations due to the concentration of demand for ride-sharing vehicle travel in one location. The objective of this study is to reduce traffic congestion caused by this increase in traffic. This method reduces traffic congestion by adding a process that generates transfers based on traffic congestion to the conventional ride-sharing scheduling method. When a traffic congestion is occurring on one of the roads, the system instructs ride-sharing vehicles that share a common congested road in their planned route to transfer at a certain period of time. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated via traffic simulation on ride-sharing services.