Road Speed Profiling for Upfront Travel Time Estimation

Abstract

Accurate travel time estimation is crucial for several service based industries such as ride hailing, food delivery, logistics etc. Promises made to the passengers in terms of cab allocation, waiting times and food delivery times need to be kept to avoid passenger churn given the number of competing start-ups in these sectors. Further, travel times impact the cost of the cab rides and delivery charges which are shown upfront to the passengers and drivers. Trip time estimations must thus be very accurate to avoid both passenger and driver disenchantment. In this paper we present a solution for accurate upfront TTE based on RSP and a corrective ML model using data from around 9.5 million taxi trips in two (each) mega-cities in S.E Asia.