A Space-Time Model for Demand in Free-Floating Carsharing Systems

Abstract

A novel model approach is proposed to estimate the spatiotemporal distribution of demand for free-floating carsharing. The proposed model is based on a Poisson regression model for right-censored data and estimates possibly time-varying demand rates of small subareas of a service region based on booking data with spatiotemporal information on pickups and dropoffs of cars. The approach allows operators to gain insights into the spatiotemporal distribution of demand for their service and to estimate the loss of demand due to unavailability of cars. Moreover, it can also be used as an input to improve the design of the service, through relocation techniques or to analyze the service with macrosimulation models. In addition, the approach is applied to a case study with real data.