Simulation and Evaluation of Collective Taxi Systems

Our aim is to provide a door-to-door high quality service comparable with the one of classical taxis, providing comfort and convenience equivalent to individual cars, with similar fares to the ones on public transport, with a view to improving traffic flow and road safety, with consideration for the environment just by raising the average number of passengers per vehicle. These are some of the expected features under which we intend to perform a system of collective taxis in urban areas. The aim is to achieve the optimal functioning of an elegant but also complex transportation system without causing congestion and inconvenience at a minimal operating cost. We intend to operate intensive discrete event simulations, for both centralised and decentralised management, with a fine tuning of intelligent real-time decision algorithms all together with off-line resource optimisation. Thus we shall be in a position to analyse the system performances, evaluate the service quality and consequently optimise all the control algorithms for defining the optimal level of resources associated with every possible demand level, as well as the respective operation costs within various contexts and situations.