Identifying the Potential for Partial Integration of Private and Public Transportation

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the potential for a partial integration of private and public transportation as provided by taxi and bus services on the level of individual trips. While these modes are typically separated for economic reasons, in the future with shared Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) providing cheap and efficient transportation services, such distinctions will blur. Consequently, optimization based on real-time data will allow exploiting parallels in demand in a dynamic way, such as the proposed approach in the current work. New operational and pricing strategies will then need to be considered, along with regulatory tools to limit congestion, encourage sharing and provide services in a more sustainable way by utilizing a dynamic landscape of urban transportation. In the current work, we evaluate existing parallels between individual bus and taxi trips in two Asian cities and show how exploiting these synergies could form the basis of achieving some of the above goals in the future.