Description
Could we improve the hitchhiking and make it evolve into a daily carpool mode, which is both flexible and secure?
This is the question we deal with in this study, based on two days of hitchhiking testing in spring 2017 on the outskirts of Bourg-en-Bresse.
Contrary to popular belief, our waiting time was very acceptable: on more than two hundred tests, our wait was only 6 minutes on average. Another subject of astonishment: the more traffic there is, the more we wait. In fact, the propensity of drivers to stop is much better on a small neighborhood road (one in two cars stops) than on a road with high traffic (one in twenty and sometimes less). This also applies when comparing different points on the same route. Thus one in fifteen drivers stops when traffic is low while this proportion can fall to one in fifty on a major road at rush hour. In case of heavy traffic, motorists stop little because they think someone else is going to do it. It is a “transfer of responsibility” mechanism that we consider universal but could be greatly reduced if an instant carpool line is created, in which case “stops” would be installed every 3 or 4 km along the road and the passenger would go there to wait for a driver to take it.
Digital systems would make it possible to display waiting times, secure the relationship between carmakers and make payment. Stops would be placed in places where cars don't run too fast. Indeed, our tests reveal that traffic speed has a great influence on the length of the wait.
With today’s hitchhiking, the wait is less than 15 minutes in 90 % of cases, which is already a good success rate. By extrapolating these results to tomorrow’s carpooling, the success rate could reach 98 %, and even 100 % on some roads.
It will remain to convince the passengers to embark on it but it’s another story.
The analysis of these results can be found here https://www.autosbus.org/sites/default/files/Autostop%20170622_1.pdf
Resources
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Description |
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54 |
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https://www.data.gouv.fr/api/1/datasets/r/0c8b4593-ca75-44d7-9db8-5e0400182048 |
Tags
- rural
- periurbain
- covoiturage-temps-reel
- autostop