Microscopic Traffic Simulation Based Dispatch Modeling for Taxi Booking Service

This paper presents a study of taxi booking service in Singapore using a microscopic traffic simulation model embedded with a link-to-link shortest path algorithm. A novel trip-chaining strategy for taxi booking based on a customized algorithm of Pickup and Delivery Problem with Time Window (PDPTW) was proposed. The idea is to chain several bookings with demand time points which are spread out within a reasonable period of time, and with each pick-up point coinciding with or being within close proximity to the previous drop-off location. Based on the simulation results, the proposed system has the potential to improve the taxi booking service currently operating in Singapore.