Replay · 2010-01-13, 07:30 to 07:40

Short of drivers, greedy vs batched

Ten minutes of a Wednesday rush hour: every taxi request in Manhattan from the 2010 trip records, against a modelled fleet of 2,000 drivers, well short of what that morning needed. Greedy hands each request, as it comes, the driver fastest to reach it, however far that is. Batching collects 10 seconds of requests and matches them together, so a scarce driver goes to a rider near it. Watch the lines from drivers to pickups.

Waiting for a driver

–

A driver on the way, with its line

–

Driver with a rider

–

Idle driver

–

Greedy: each request gets the nearest driver by road, as it comes. Same seed, same morning, same riders; only the matching differs.