Large-scale nationwide ridesharing system: A case study of Chunyun

We deploy and evaluate CountryRoads during the Chinese Spring Festival travel season (Chunyun period), when all forms of transportation are stressed or near saturation, and when many lower-income individuals fail to reserve seats for rail or flight trips. We present our design choices, analytics, and lessons learned from our multi-year deployment in 2012, 2014, and 2015. The improvements over the years resulted in up to 17,272 users, 4777 ridesharing tuples, and an eventual success rate of 23.2% in 2015. This is a significant result considering that most of our participants use CountryRoads as a last resort in response to public transportation shortages.