| Congestion is a prevalent problem in almost all urban environment impacting numerous features of urban living. Increased number of vehicles and lack of parking spaces in the cities contributes to traffic congestion, fuel loss and adversely affects the sustainability. Ridesharing is a proven technique that can mitigate traffic congestion and satisfy urban commuters. Getting a taxi in highly congested areas (e.g. airports, conferences) is both time consuming and expensive. Chicago Tribune reports that wait at Chicago O'Hare International airport for taxi cabs can be as long as 45 minutes. Finding a parking space during peak time in a city is also frustrating and increases congestion in urban areas. This thesis addresses the traffic congestion problem in urban areas in two aspects: reducing the number of vehicle trips by proposing RSVP, a ridesharing system that uses walking and virtual pools, and reducing unwanted vehicle cruising (and thus vehicle miles traveled) for parking on urban streets by proposing Perfect Park, a low power smartphone application that helps cruising drivers to find and navigate to a parking space. In Part I of this thesis, RSVP ridesharing scheme is described with focus on a ridesharing model that involves walking, ridesharing algorithms, and evaluation of the model and algorithms using a database that recorded real taxi trips in NYC. In Part II of this thesis Perfect Park is introduced and its system level design, evaluation and performance are discussed. |
