The Modelling of State of the Art Taxi Operations and Dispatching Approaches

Abstract

One issue existed in the current taxi services is the imbalance between supply and demand. In response to this issue, the automatic taxi dispatching approach is widely used. However, three issues in the current taxi dispatching system are identified in this thesis: a) issues for the Booking Taxi Service (BTS); b) issues for the Non-Booking Taxi Service (NBTS); and c) issues for the evaluation of dispatching strategies. This thesis has provided comprehensive studies and solutions to mediate these issues: firstly, a micro-simulation based Taxi Service Model (TSM) is proposed, which aims to evaluate dispatching strategies properly; secondly, two dispatching strategies are proposed for the BTS and tested by the aforementioned micro-simulation based TSM; thirdly, a novel control strategy is proposed for the NBTS and also tested by the micro-simulation model. This thesis is expected to offer persuasive supports for the selecting process between alternative advanced technologies for the taxi services.