Taxi GPS data to help solve traffic problems

Taxi GPS data to help solve traffic problems

Beijing is famous for its traffic jams: In the streets of the Chinese capital is nine hours a day rush hour. As in many cities trying to transportation planners, to be lord over the chaos by building relief roads, improve mass transit or to enforce traffic regulations more rigorously. But the solution could lie elsewhere: in the observation of taxis, TR reported in its online edition.

Over two years, researchers at Microsoft Research Asia, the GPS location data have evaluated more than 30,000 of the official Beijing 67 000 cabs. It was not just about them but to identify notorious bottlenecks in traffic flow. "Blocked road sections are only a symptom, not the problem itself," says Zheng Yu, who led the project. "We want to find the actual cause." 1.44 million trips pass the taxi drivers in Beijing every day, or 4.2 percent of all trips within the city limits.

The starting point of the project was initially to gather information about the taxi rides: one where the passengers get where they get out, choose which route the driver? The Microsoft researchers divided into different zones while Beijing and analyzed data are then based on the taxi, which zones particularly badly connected. There, the planners could then reloading. The evaluation program also indicates if the transport network a certain number of passengers can no longer cope.

According to Zheng, the program can be easily transferred to any major city with an adequate number of taxis. Beijing is using its taxi fleet in the world 4th place Taxi to the richest cities also include Mexico City, Bangkok, Tokyo, New York, Buenos Aires and Moscow.