Why we should share our cabs in New York City
Yellow taxi cabs are a permanent fixture of New York City's roads. Hail a cab, hop in, and we rarely give a thought to sharing our ride. However, a new map shows us reasons why we might want to reconsider these behaviors.
A map created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s Senseable Lab is an interactive program which captured over 170 million unique taxi trips taken by passengers in 13,500 cabs around NYC in 2011.
The map shows how and when individuals were dropped off, highlighting high-density zones and how patterns of use change throughout the day. If this data was used to create sharing networks, not only could it lessen the expense of living in one of the most expensive cities in the world, but we could also save in miles traveled and the amount of pollution emitted as a result.
In an attempt to encourage the creation of ride-sharing networks, MIT says on its blog that "significant improvements of such a shared system are expected to lead to less congestion in road traffic, less running costs and split fares, and to a less polluted, cleaner environment."
Via: Fast Co.Design
Image credit: HubCab
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com