Title: A Rolling Horizon Approach to the Optimal Dispatching of Taxis
Abstract: This paper describes how, in many towns and cities, taxis are requested by telephone and there is then a process by which each request is assigned. The nature of the process depends on the structure of the industry, which varies from city to city. For example, in some cases taxi drivers are self-employed, the call center offers the job to all drivers, and the driver who responds first is assigned to the job. In other cases, the drivers work for a taxi company and a dispatcher in a control center assigns the job to the best placed taxi within the company. In all cases, taxis are in radio contact with some form of call center from where information about each job (location of the request and any other relevant details) emanates. Often in operations of this type, the jobs are queued on a display in front of the driver, with the driver reporting back to the control center upon completion of each job. This paper assumes that the taxis are assigned jobs by a central dispatcher with the simple objective of minimizing passenger waiting time. This objective can be regarded as synonymous with the maximization of fleet utilization. However, dispatching the taxi that can reach a request first is at best a heuristic. It is conceivable that the taxi that can reach the request first might actually be better assigned to a subsequent request. A better heuristic might therefore compare the passenger waiting time incurred by assigning a taxi to the current request with the expected passenger waiting time if the taxi were instead assigned to the next request, and assign the taxi with the largest comparative advantage.
Publication Year: 2005
Publication Date: 2005-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 13
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot