A Ride Sharing System based on An Expansive Search-Based Algorithm

Ride sharing is one of the several transportation alternatives used to ease and skip traffic problems worldwide. A platform of interest is GrabShare, where its ride sharing algorithm was empirically found to be simple. However, the algorithm has several limitations, such as it being not truly optimal due to catering to user experiences, and only able to handle up to two bookings. Hence, there is a need to develop a ride sharing system that is scalable, fast, and efficient especially in terms of finding matches and recommending routes. A Modified Search-based Ride Sharing algorithm, which uses an expansion-based method, was developed as a response to these requirements. Results showed that the Modified Search-based Ride Sharing algorithm generally outperforms the empirically-derived GrabShare algorithm in terms of route length, shared route percentage, and processing time. However, GrabShare performs better when there are few passengers in the area while the Modified Search-based Ride Sharing algorithm runs relatively slower when the sources and destinations are far from each other.