Performance of Multiagent Taxi Dispatch on Extended-Runtime Taxi Availability: A Simulation Study

An empirical and comparative evaluation of multiagent taxi dispatch with extended (E) runtime taxi availability is presented. A taxi in operation is said to be E-runtime available if it has a passenger alighting in ¿x > 0 minutes' time or is empty, but has no new committed taxi request to service next. In a multiagent architecture, we consider a new operation policy wherein agents of E-runtime available taxis are allowed to negotiate in individual groups of size N for new taxi requests. The main objective is to present an evaluation of the multiagent system performance gains provided by different times-to-arrival of ¿x, under a discrete range of demand rates for several iV-group sizes, as compared with the base case when ¿x = 0. It is shown that the proposed policy can effectively reduce customer waiting time and empty taxi cruising time by up to about 60% and 96%, respectively, when the service demand is high for a 1000-strong taxi fleet. It is observed that the value selection for the policy parameter ¿x is an important aspect for improving the general performance of multiagent taxi dispatch.