A new study released Monday by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) has found that just 3000 ride-share vehicles could do the job of New York City’s roughly 13,500 licensed cabs. While this is a remarkable finding about the potential in ride-sharing, there is a catch—it only works if all the passengers are using the carpool option offered by Uber and Lyft.
The study used an algorithm developed by the CSAIL researchers that used publically available data from 3 million taxi rides in New York City over the course of one week in 2013. In a model that simulates taxi-requests in NYC, the algorithm was able to work in real-time to reroute ride-share vehicles based on incoming requests and send non-occupied cars to high-demand areas.
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