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Title:

Measuring the Pulse of a City Via Taxi Operation: A Case Study

Accession Number:

01630091

Record Type:

Component

Abstract:

Taxis are vital to modern urban transportation systems. As a great complement to public transportation, taxi services are popular for their flexibility and availability. The ever-increasing magnitude of taxi services has generated a large amount of data about vehicle locations and trips, making it possible to investigate taxi operations in detail. Previous work on this topic has addressed aspects of taxi services such as trip type clustering, visualization of taxi trips and taxi dispatching mechanisms. Based on a data set of taxi trips in New York City, in this paper the authors analyze a taxi system from some new perspectives. First, from records of fares collected, the authors investigate driver and passenger behaviors; specifically, what makes some drivers successful and how passengers tip. Second, the authors study the trips themselves, finding a strong periodicity in the data; for example, the number of pick-ups, the average speed and the average tip ratio are highly periodic in a location-specific manner. This periodicity suggests that each neighborhood in a city has its own “pulse” which makes the taxi system of a city behave in a predictable fashion. Third, the authors examine the impact of various socio-cultural factors on taxi operations. For example, the average tip ratio of taxi trips can be affected by the outcome of a sports game; fans tip more when their teams win. These results indicate a close connection between taxi systems and human activities, further connecting the pulse of a city to the operation of its taxi systems.

Supplemental Notes:

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP060 Standing Committee on Paratransit.

Monograph Accession #:

01618707

Report/Paper Numbers:

17-00173

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Zhu, Chenguang
Prabhakar, Balaji

Pagination:

18p

Publication Date:

2017

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

Digital/other

Features:

Figures; Maps; References

Geographic Terms:

New York (New York)

Subject Areas:

Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Public Transportation

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2017 Paper #17-00173

Files:

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Created Date:

Dec 8 2016 9:58AM