HopOn: A Personalized Ride-Sharing System based on Socio-Economic Factors

Abstract

Rapid urbanization and increasing income levels combined with poor and insufficient road network to accommodate vehicles is causing a major traffic problem in Sri Lanka. Additionally, in urban areas, traffic congestion is leading to an increase in air and noise pollution as well. Numerous solutions were tried by authorities, yet no promising results were yielded to address these issues successfully. Contrastingly, increasing road network capacity to solve this problem is very costly and feasible only up to a certain point. Another option is to limit the number of vehicles in the city either by law or by alternative means such as ride-sharing. The best ride-sharing method available is the public transportation, however, due to the limitations of it, upper middle-class opt not to use those hence use their own vehicle to get the expected comfortability. This study is aimed at developing a ride-sharing application by profiling the users based on user reputations, vehicle type, socioeconomic variables such as education, social status, and security concerns of the users, and user ratings. Unlike existing carpooling applications that primarily depend on cost and destination to offer ride options, the proposed application further developed to consider the model of the vehicle for fare calculation.