Social Carpooling-based Road Congestion Mitigation: A Three-Level Analysis

Different from Transportation Network Companies (taxicabs, i.e., Uber) and shared-car providers (rental cars, i.e., Zipcar), social carpooling is personalized incentives-based and smartphone-enabled peer-to- peer ridesharing. Social carpooling emerges as a community-based strategy to reduce car ownership and mitigate congestion. It facilitates the transition from solo driving to effective carpooling by matching individuals' travel demand in space and time. Personalized incentives, such as real-time information, travel feedbacks, and monetary incentives, are leveraged to spur the change. This project investigates the impact of social carpooling on users' travel behavior and the system's performance. The empirical data is supported by Metropia, which is a social carpooling platform enabling ride-match. Three research tasks are planned. First, at an individual level, the research team will identify what factors impact the travel mode change toward social carpooling? The findings will help understand how social carpooling is varied by individuals' income, gender, race, and other sociodemographic characteristics. Meanwhile, the team will explore the effectiveness of different personalized incentive schemes the use social carpooling. Second, at an area level, the team will estimate how many social carpooling trips can be generated if such programs are fully deployed by the general public? This step will generate social carpooling trip demands for all traffic analysis zones, which is the basis for the following trip distribution, mode split, and dynamic traffic assignment. Third, at the system level, the team will answer how much road congestion can be mitigated with a large-scale social carpooling deployment? Statistical models, machine learning algorithms, and simulation methods, including panel data analysis, synthetic minority oversampling technique, and dynamic traffic assignment, will be applied.

Language

  • English

Project

  • Status: Active
  • Funding: $151349
  • Contract Numbers:

    69A3551947136

    79075-00-B

    79075-12

    79075-13

  • Sponsor Organizations:

    National Institute for Congestion Reduction

    University of South Florida
    Tampa, FL  United States  33620

    Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

    University Transportation Centers Program
    Department of Transportation
    Washington, DC  United States  20590
  • Managing Organizations:

    National Institute for Congestion Reduction

    University of South Florida
    Tampa, FL  United States  33620
  • Project Managers:

    Li, Xiaopeng

  • Performing Organizations:

    National Institute for Congestion Reduction

    University of South Florida
    Tampa, FL  United States  33620

    Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI)

    400 Harvey Mitchell Parkway South
    Suite 300
    College Station, TX  United States  77845-4375
  • Principal Investigators:

    Chen, Peng

    Winters, Philip

  • Start Date: 20210501
  • Expected Completion Date: 20220930
  • Actual Completion Date: 0
  • USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01784676
  • Record Type: Research project
  • Source Agency: National Institute for Congestion Reduction
  • Contract Numbers: 69A3551947136, 79075-00-B, 79075-12, 79075-13
  • Files: UTC, RIP
  • Created Date: Oct 13 2021 5:04PM