A dynamic traffic model and dispatching control scheme for urban road networks with ride-sharing services

Mobility service by ride-sharing receive significant popularity. The existing approaches generally focus on the ride-sharing problems as small-scale vehicle routing optimization problems. These approaches considers static traffic flow, rarely treating the spatial-temporal dynamic features of traffic. This paper develops a macroscopic modeling approach for the operation and control of multi-mode traffic flow in ride-sharing urban road systems where vehicles circulate with service type as single- or multiple-occupancies. We construct a macroscopic traffic flow model capturing the spatial-temporal traffic dynamics, and the mode choices among private cars, taxis and sharing vehicles that allows multi-occupancy. The model can reflect evolution of vehicular and passenger trips under different travel demand, network structures and dispatching strategies. A region-level dispatch control system of relocating taxis and ride-sharing vehicles is developed. Results show the proposed dispatching control effectively increases the utilization of vehicles and reduces congestion and travel cost.