A New Model for a Carpool Matching Service

PLoS One. 2015 Jun 30;10(6):e0129257. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0129257. eCollection 2015.

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.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Automobile Driving / statistics & numerical data*
  • Automobiles / statistics & numerical data
  • China
  • Cities
  • Computer Simulation
  • Decision Support Techniques
  • Humans
  • Models, Theoretical*
  • Transportation / statistics & numerical data*
  • Workflow

Grants and funding

The authors have no support or funding to report.