title: A New Model for a Carpool Matching Service.
abstract: Carpooling is an effective means of reducing traffic. A carpool team shares a vehicle for their commute, which reduces the number of vehicles on the road during rush hour periods. Carpooling is officially sanctioned by most governments, and is supported by the construction of high-occupancy vehicle lanes. A number of carpooling services have been designed in order to match commuters into carpool teams, but it known that the determination of optimal carpool teams is a combinatorially complex problem, and therefore technological solutions are difficult to achieve. In this paper, a model for carpool matching services is proposed, and both optimal and heuristic approaches are tested to find solutions for that model. The results show that different solution approaches are preferred over different ranges of problem instances. Most importantly, it is demonstrated that a new formulation and associated solution procedures can permit the determination of optimal carpool teams and routes. An instantiation of the model is presented (using the street network of Guangzhou city, China) to demonstrate how carpool teams can be determined.
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography and GeoInformation Science, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jizhe
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography and GeoInformation Science, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, United States of America.
authors.forename: Kevin M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Curtin
authors.affiliation: School of Geography, South China Normal University Tianhe Park, Tianhe, Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Weihong
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: School of Geography, South China Normal University Tianhe Park, Tianhe, Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Yonglong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhao
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001334:Automobile Driving / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D001336:Automobiles / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D002681:China; D002947:Cities; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D014186:Transportation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D057188:Workflow