Research on Taxi Passenger-finding Strategy Considering Load Balancing

The long-standing issue of inaccurate perception of passenger demand and low efficiency in finding passengers for cruising taxis has persisted. This paper develops a profit maximization model with load balancing, recommending the most profitable areas as passenger-finding strategies to address the issue. This paper uses a Voronoi diagram centered on road intersections to divide the study area into independent regions called traffic units. Passenger demand, average trip duration and operational revenue for each traffic unit are determined based on the distribution of Origin-Destination (OD) information within the units. Based on this, a profit maximization model considering load balancing is constructed, with its coefficients determined through a multi-attribute decision-making method. The model's effectiveness was validated by comparing profit changes before and after introducing load balancing. The results show that load balancing alters weight distribution and improves passenger-finding efficiency, offering significant theoretical and practical value for taxi operations.