Analytical Model to Estimate Ride Pooling Traffic Impacts by Using the Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram

Ride pooling services are considered as a customer-centric mode of transportation, but, at the same time, an environmentally friendly one, because of the expected positive impacts on traffic congestion. This paper presents an analytical model that can estimate the traffic impacts of ride pooling on a city by using a previously developed shareability model, which captures the percentage of shared trips in an area, and the existence of a macroscopic fundamental diagram for the network of consideration. Moreover, the analytical model presented also investigates the impact that improving the average velocity of a city has on further increasing the percentage of shared trips in an operation area. The model is validated by means of microscopic traffic simulations for a ride pooling service operating in the city of Munich, Germany, where private vehicle trips are substituted with pooled vehicle trips for different penetration rates of the service. The results show that the average velocity in the city can be increased by up to 20% for the scenario when all private vehicle trips are substituted with pooled vehicle trips; however, the improvement is lower for smaller penetration rates of ride pooling. The operators and cities can use this study to quickly estimate the traffic impacts of introducing a ride pooling service in a certain area and for a certain set of service quality parameters.