Shareability Networks: A New Way to Model Taxi Sharing Problems

The burgeoning "sharing economy" phenomenon--the collaborative consumption of shared resources made possible by the pervasiveness of information technologies and Internet connectivity [4, 6]--is rapidly taking hold in the context of urban transportation. Business is booming for vehicle-sharing companies, such as Zipcar and Car2Go, and for companies that offer ride-sharing services, such as Bandwagon and Uber, which recently launched the new UberPool application. New sharing services/companies are popping up in cities worldwide.