Forecasting the supply of fleets to meet emerging travel demands and service needs in cities
The availability of vehicles is a critical factor behind successful shared-use mobility services. Proper management of supply-demand dynamics is paramount for achieving viability in a new mobility service, as achieving scale often requires a large capital investment. Under-supplying the fleet would result in low service availability and user dissatisfaction; over-supplying results in inefficient use of resources. In addition, as a new shared mobility platform diversifies its service across both passenger and freight delivery, its required scale of operation and investment becomes more difficult to estimate.
In this service deployment simulation research, the City Science group aims to create an accessible simulation tool to enable cities to forecast the size of deployment of new shared mobility services using the Persuasive Electric Vehicle (PEV) delivering passengers and packages as an initial test case. The simulation tool also allows for testing various system design features, such as strategies for rebalancing fleets and for distributing charging stations.