Taxi Ride sharing in Kuwait: Econ-enviro study

Abstract

Traffic congestion had been the most important and sensitive problem facing Kuwait roads for decades. The objectives of this study were to: optimize the traffic flow on road networks by implementing shared rides, reduce vehicle emissions and minimize the ride cost. The concept concentrated on sharing the journeys starting and ending around the same place and time. The effect of ridesharing was studied according to the data collected for 3 months (July 2018, October 2018 and January 2019) from a taxi company. The data was then filtered so that the start point of all trips was South Surra. Three different scenarios were created: single passenger, two passengers, and more than two passengers. Java NetBeans was used to calculate the total distance for each month and the cost for each trip after applying the concept. “My driving” was used to obtain the fuel consumption to calculate the gas emissions for the three scenarios;CO, NOx and HC emissions. For the trip distance analysis, the results for July, October, and January decreased by 0.84%, 0.45%, and 1.25%, respectively. For gas emissions and by comparing the first scenario with the second one, the CO, NOx and HC emissions were reduced by 9.072%, 9.069%, and 9.074%, respectively. Finally, by comparing the first scenario with the third one, CO, NOx and HC emissions were lowered by 0.116%, 0.08%, and 0.108%, respectively.