Utilizing Taxi Empty Cruise Time to Solve the Short Distance Trip Problem

Short distance trips are crucial for urban mobility and accessibility. They can contribute to integrated transportation (the “last mile” problem), and more generally to urban ad-hoc ride sharing scenarios [1]. Since no transport provider covers short distance trips where demand arises, private car use is flourishing in recent decades, with all the known disadvantages of traffic congestions, resource wastes, air pollution, and insufficient parking space especially in city centers. Taxis are focusing on providing a door-to-door service, but they do not perform well in short distance trip pickup and delivery services. This paper identifies the obstacles, and suggests the empty cruise time of taxis as (a) a feasible solution for the short distance trip problem, and (b) a contribution to develop a short distance trip market for the taxi industry. This empty cruise contribution hypothesis is investigated by testing different models that define ad-hoc matches of passengers and empty cruising taxis. An agent-based simulation is designed to study the match probability by these models. Based on the experimental results it is shown that taxi empty cruise match models have the potential to solve the short distance problem and to develop the taxi short distance trip markets.