Using a multi-agent simulation tool to estimate the car-pooling potential

Abstract

It is a general trend in transportation planning to try to minimize the negative externalities of the transport system as a whole, such as noise or pollutant emissions. One of the ways to achieve this is to reduce the number of cars on the roads, for instance by increasing car occupancy. This paper focuses on evaluating the potential of this possibility. The factors influencing this potential are manifold: behavioral, structural (number of potential matches), organizational (quality of available services to meet co-travelers). In previous studies, mainly the behavioral and organizational factors were analyzed. This paper focuses on the structural factor. To do so, the highly detailed daily plans generated by the multi-agent microsimulation software MATSim are searched for potential matches. Information about the potential matches is used to assess the feasibility of carpooling. In particular, it is shown that when considering only structural factors, it is possible to group most of the car trips into two-person car-pools. The results of the analysis lead to the conclusion that there is no structural obstacle to carpooling development, and thus that the causes of the low share of this mode is to search in both the behavioral and organizational factors.