A New Model for a Carpool Matching Service

Date

2015-06-30

Authors

Xia, Jizhe
Curtin, Kevin M.
Li, Weihong
Zhao, Yonglong

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Public Library of Science

Abstract

Carpooling is an effective means of reducing traffic. A carpool team shares a vehicle for their commute, which reduces the number of vehicles on the road during rush hour periods. Carpooling is officially sanctioned by most governments, and is supported by the construction of high-occupancy vehicle lanes. A number of carpooling services have been designed in order to match commuters into carpool teams, but it known that the determination of optimal carpool teams is a combinatorially complex problem, and therefore technological solutions are difficult to achieve. In this paper, a model for carpool matching services is proposed, and both optimal and heuristic approaches are tested to find solutions for that model. The results show that different solution approaches are preferred over different ranges of problem instances. Most importantly, it is demonstrated that a new formulation and associated solution procedures can permit the determination of optimal carpool teams and routes. An instantiation of the model is presented (using the street network of Guangzhou city, China) to demonstrate how carpool teams can be determined.

Description

Keywords

Simulated annealing, Linear programming, Transportation, Roads, Computing methods, Computer networks, Fuels, Optimization

Citation

Xia J, Curtin KM, Li W, Zhao Y (2015) A New Model for a Carpool Matching Service. PLoS ONE 10(6): e0129257. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0129257