To study ride-sharing scenarios, the researchers delved into a database compiled by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission that included information about each of the 172 million taxi rides in the city in 2011: where the passenger was picked up and dropped off, time of pickup and time of drop-off.Then, applying a computational technique known as shareability networks, they combined trips that were headed in the same direction at the same time without taking the passengers too far out of their way.They found that sharing would reduce the number of trips, and the number of taxis, by 40 percent and that passengers would still arrive in the same amount of time, give or take a few minutes.

If 2 New Yorkers Shared a Cab ... - NYTimes.com Friday, September 5, 2014 @ 10:33pm