“To our knowledge, this is the first time that scientists have been able to experimentally quantify the trade-off between fleet size, capacity, waiting time, travel delay and operational costs for a range of vehicles, from taxis to vans and shuttles,” said professor Daniela Rus of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in a statement.
How many ride-sharing vehicles would it take to replace taxis in New York City?
Answer: 3,000
Using data from 3 million taxi rides, scientists at MIT created a new algorithm that redirects cars in real time based on incoming requests. And the information from the algorithm suggests that the approximately 14,000 taxis operating in New York City could be replaced by 3,000 four-passenger ride-sharing vehicles. As reported by New Atlas, the ride-share vehicles could serve 98 percent of the city’s demand for taxis with an average wait time of 2.7 minutes.
“To our knowledge, this is the first time that scientists have been able to experimentally quantify the trade-off between fleet size, capacity, waiting time, travel delay and operational costs for a range of vehicles, from taxis to vans and shuttles,” said professor Daniela Rus of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in a statement.
“To our knowledge, this is the first time that scientists have been able to experimentally quantify the trade-off between fleet size, capacity, waiting time, travel delay and operational costs for a range of vehicles, from taxis to vans and shuttles,” said professor Daniela Rus of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in a statement.
