A Model of Multimodal Ridesharing and Its Analysis

Getting a taxi in highly congested areas (e.g. Airports, conferences) is both time consuming and expensive. Chicago Tribune reports that wait at Chicago O'Hare International airport for taxi cabs can be as long as 45 minutes [1]. In this paper we propose RSVP, a ridesharing system that uses walking and virtual pools. RSVP is aimed mainly for transportation hubs, such as airports, railway stations, etc. In these places, a steady stream of passengers arrive via some public transport mode, say train, and then depart to different destinations. We introduce a model for ride-sharing that involves walking, devise ridesharing algorithms, and evaluate them using a database that recorded real taxi trips in NYC.