Uncovering Factors Affecting Taxi Income from GPS Traces at the Directional Road Segment Level

Abstract

Nowadays, the market demand for taxis is still intense. However, there exist lots of issues affecting the healthy development of the taxi industry, such as an increasing difficulty in hailing taxis, detouring behavior etc., and especially, the low incomes of taxi drivers. This paper establishes a multi-layer road index (MRI) system of 7862 directional road segments (DRSs), and collects over 194 million occupied GPS points within a week, revealing the factors affecting taxi drivers’ incomes in Shenzhen, China. The income differences has been identified on different DRSs, which accordingly have been categorized into two levels. Four categories of DRS factors, i.e., road attributes, traffic dynamics, points of interest (POIs), and taxi operation strategies, are defined as the impact factors affecting income levels. The selected sample-based binomial logit (SBL) model has been proposed to reveal the significance of these influencing factors. The results indicate that the road segments with different features have different incomes over different time periods. The main factors in income analysis are the factors used to represent taxi operation strategies. Highly rewarding pick-up road segments can be identified, which could contribute to drivers’ income improvements, and can further contribute to the development of the taxi market.