Smart public transportation services using smart phones in vehicular environments

Abstract

Taxis play an important role in modern public transportation networks, especially in Lebanon where public transportation services are still underdeveloped. Street hailing is the current common method for getting a taxi, where you simply wait on side roads and hail to find a taxi who thinks you fit within his planned route. Taxi drivers currently rely on a simple first come-first serve approach with luck playing a large role in their daily profit. Problems arising from the current system are low taxi utilization, long passenger waiting times, road safety issues and traffic congestion. Our objective is to implement a new system that improves the existing shared taxi service by benefiting both the taxi drivers and passengers. The general idea is to design a system whose server receives requests from passengers and offers from drivers using smart phones with GPS capabilities and Internet access (3G/WIFI hotspots). The server periodically analyzes the geographical distribution of potential passengers on a digital map and then runs a scheduling algorithm to generate a stable taxi-passenger scheduling and finally broadcasts the allocations back to taxi drivers and potential passengers. The server will also utilize the taxi drivers' movement patterns to gain insight into the traffic congestion levels on Beirut's streets. The algorithm will be tested by running a model system on a network simulator.