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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Pick-Up Locations

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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Pick-Up Locations Vedernikov et al. Open Geospatial Data, Software and Standards (2016) 1:12 Open Geospatial Data, DOI 10.1186/s40965-016-0012-1 Software and Standards ORIGINAL ARTICLE Open Access The Hitchhiker’s guide to the pick-up locations Oleksii Vedernikov* , Lars Kulik and Kotagiri Ramamohanarao Abstract Background: Hitchhiking is a well-known form of transportation, which has been extensively studied from a sociological perspective. While this tourism approach has been popular in some countries for decades, the question of making hitchhiking fast has never been studied from a comprehensive point of view. In this research, we aim to find the best locations for hitchhiking, which may be used in travel recommender systems. Methods: For this purpose, we study the relationships between certain spatial properties and waiting time at pick-up locations, estimate statistical significance of several factors according to various countries. Results: We extracted features for the data from hitchhiking logs, analyzed their importance and built corresponding classification and regression models for estimating hitchhiking experience with a sufficient accuracy. Conclusions: This paper is the first to analyze important spatial factors for a successful hitchhiking trip and construct models to predict the quality and waiting time at hitchhiking locations. Background Hitchhiking has attracted substantial number of Motivation research papers since 1960s, and most of these studies are Hitchhiking is the first well-known form of ridesharing concerned with its social and cultural aspects. Despite its that became popular in 20th century in the US, and prominence and importance, to the best of our knowl- wide spread all around the world. It is an act of solic- edge, the process of hitchhiking has never been analysed iting and getting rides from random drivers passing by from a computational point of view. Our objectives, the road without prior arrangement. For example, an namely making hitchhiking fast and efficient, have never English Wikipedia article about hitchhiking [1] contains been studied. references to 44 movies, 21 books, 34 songs, 19 notable hitchhikers, which shows the significance of this cul- Research problem tural phenomenon. Besides, hitchhikers constitute a large The process of hitchhiking includes different stages. First, international community. For example, a website Hitchlog having in mind a final location, a hitchhiker chooses a contains information about 1,272 hitchhikers’ trips with a route and decides where to start seeking a ride. When total length of more than 2,300,000 km all over the world. a car stops, both the driver and the hitchhiker negotiate As a goodwill exchange, hitchhiking promotes values for their travel intentions. If reaching the hitchiker’s destina- sharing cost and helping unknown people. It facilitates tion requires several rides, the same process is repeated, friendship among various people from different cultural and the number of these steps may vary from one to many backgrounds. Since hitchhiking involves uncertain and due to the uncertain nature of hitchhiking. spontaneous travels, it is usually considered an adventur- Even though there are several factors for a success- ous way of travelling. In addition, it can be done on any ful hitchhiking ride, the location is considered the most road with traffic. Even though personal safety is a common important factor for a successful ride [3]. Certain loca- concern about this type of travel, surveys show that only tion properties make it easier for drivers to stop and have 1% of people who hitchhiked report negative experience enough traffic to increase the probability of a successful of hitchhiking [2]. ride for a hitchhiker. A good location is determined by two main factors: a short average waiting time for catching *Correspondence: [email protected] a ride to the desired destination, and a small probabil- University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia ity of an unusually long ride. Therefore, the choice of a © The Author(s). 2016 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Vedernikov et al. Open Geospatial Data, Software and Standards (2016) 1:12 Page 2 of 14 hitchhiking location is crucial for a successful hitchhiking conclusions and future directions of hitchhiking-related trip. This paper is the first one to identify these factors by researches. analysing hitchhiking logs. Themainresearchquestionofthispaperis: Literature review Hitchhiking • Which factors influence the popularity of some As a social and cultural phenomena, hitchhiking became locations over others, and subsequently lead to a popular in 1940s and 1960s and consequently attracted positive travel experience? many studies from sociological and psychological point of view [4]. For example, [5] experimentally showed that To answer this question, we investigate the hitchhik- females attract approximately 3 times more cars to stop ers’ website Hitchwiki that provides thousands of recorded than males, while eye contact doubled this chance for experiences with location ratings, waiting time, and com- both genders. This work also proves importance of quite ments. Using OpenStreetMap, we investigate which types specific variables, for example beards, thumbing up for of roads are most frequently used by hitchhikers. We also males and bust size accentuation for females. Despite investigate the waiting time and rating of a given location quite common stereotypes of unsafety, a 2014 survey in based on several spatial factors taken from hitchhikers’ the Netherlands [2] states that 84% of hitchhikers have descriptions. positive or predominantly positive experience, contrary The key contributions of this paper are: to the facts that people commuting by public transport are usually unhappy. One of the reasons is a recent scien- • More than 9000 locations were analysed according to tific exploration that making contacts with strangers can 11 types of roads and 5 different facilities. The most make people happy. Among reasons which lead drivers to prominent features are gas stations, traffic lights and pick up passengers, the most prominent are desire to help bus stops, which usually attract more hitchhikers. them (61.3%), having experience as hitchhikers in the past Among the different types of roads, ramps on (49.5%) and opportunity to get connected with new people motorways are extremely popular, while minor types (45.0%). of regional roads are rare. Recently, a few sociological studies were conducted to • We performed a text analysis of the user descriptions understand links between drivers’ willingness and factors and comments, and found dependencies between like: hair colour [6], bust size [7], make up [8], humor road types and certain facilities on them. For [9], weather conditions [10], and even various types of example, gas stations are popular hitchhiking points hijab [11]. Usually, these studies make hypotheses, and set on motorways, while bus stops may be significant hitchhiking experiments in different conditions according pick-up points on regional roads. to hypotheses. For example, [11] prove that liberal dress • We have developed a feature set for classifying good led 5 times more cars to stop than a conservative one, and and bad ratings of locations based on location features [10] state that sunny days facilitate drivers to stop. as well as a regression model to predict exact ratings. Some of the hitchhikers provide comprehensive details of their travels. For example, Frank [12] covered The results of this paper describe certain properties 132620 km by hitchhikikng in 2008 rides with average of needed for a successful hitchhiking location, show how 66 km per ride. Average waiting time for a ride is 19 min, hitchhiking experience is different for various roads, and or 17.3 s per kilometre. how users’ comments can improve the accuracy of a rec- In some areas hitchhiking has been recently pro- ommender system. These results are highly important to moted by local communities and organizations, there assist hitchhikers in helping them to plan an optimal trip are some modern studies about hitchhiking. A social and can assist in developing a trip planning application. In project Hopista (previously known as Lawrence OnBoard addition, infrastructure planners and local authorities, can and CarmaHop), which has a goal to promote hitch- consider these results to improve hitchhiking facilities, hiking as the basis of a community ridesharing service for example making special signs with stops or providing through social initiatives and special smartphone applica- supplementary amenities for hitchhikers. tion to match passengers and drivers. Their experiments The rest of the paper is organized as following: in Northern Kansas, US showed that the median time “Literature review” section contains aliterature review on was 6 mins, and nearly 95% got a lift within 30 mins. hitchhiking and other forms of ridesharing. “Method- Another example is NederlandLift [2] project, which aims ology” section gives a description of whole hitchhiking to promote hitchhiking lifts due to benefits in financial process and “Results and discussion” section contains
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