Journal of Big Data Analytics in Transportation (2021) 3:175–195 https://doi.org/10.1007/s42421-021-00041-4 ORIGINAL PAPER Short‑Term Prediction of Demand for Ride‑Hailing Services: A Deep Learning Approach Long Chen1 · Piyushimita (Vonu) Thakuriah2 · Konstantinos Ampountolas3 Received: 1 December 2020 / Revised: 28 February 2021 / Accepted: 7 April 2021 / Published online: 21 April 2021 © The Author(s) 2021, corrected publication 2021 Abstract As ride-hailing services become increasingly popular, being able to accurately predict demand for such services can help operators efciently allocate drivers to customers, and reduce idle time, improve trafc congestion, and enhance the pas- senger experience. This paper proposes UBERNET, a deep learning convolutional neural network for short-time prediction of demand for ride-hailing services. Exploiting traditional time series approaches for this problem is challenging due to strong surges and declines in pickups, as well as spatial concentrations of demand. This leads to pickup patterns that are unevenly distributed over time and space. UBERNET employs a multivariate framework that utilises a number of temporal and spatial features that have been found in the literature to explain demand for ride-hailing services. Specifcally, the proposed model includes two sub-networks that aim to encode the source series of various features and decode the predicting series, respec- tively. To assess the performance and efectiveness of UBERNET, we use 9 months of Uber pickup data in 2014 and 28 spatial and temporal features from New York City. We use a number of features suggested by the transport operations and travel behaviour research areas as being relevant to passenger demand prediction, e.g., weather, temporal factors, socioeconomic and demographics characteristics, as well as travel-to-work, built environment and social factors such as crime level, within a multivariate framework, that leads to operational and policy insights for multiple communities: the ride-hailing operator, passengers, third-part location-based service providers and revenue opportunities to drivers, and transport operators such as road trafc authorities, and public transport agencies. By comparing the performance of UBERNET with several other approaches, we show that the prediction quality of the model is highly competitive. Further, UBERNET’s prediction perfor- mance is better when using economic, social and built environment features. This suggests that UBERNET is more naturally suited to including complex motivators of travel behavior in making real-time demand predictions for ride-hailing services. Keywords Ride-hailing services · Socio-economic variables · Spatio-temporal features · Deep learning · Convolutional neural networks (CNN) Introduction With the advent of Web 2.0, ride-sharing platforms such as Uber and Lyft are becoming a popular way to travel. For * Long Chen instance, over 14 million trips were provided daily in more [email protected] than 700 cities around the world by Uber alone1. To ef- Piyushimita Vonu Thakuriah ciently manage ride-hailing service operations, there is a [email protected] need to have fne-grained predictions of the demand for such Konstantinos Ampountolas services, towards the goal of allocating drivers to customers [email protected] in order to maximize customer service and revenue. This paper proposes UBERNET, a deep learning convolu- 1 7 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, UK tional neural network (CNN) for the short-term demand pre- 2 Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, diction of ride-hailing services, using spatio-temporal data Rutgers University, New Jersey 08901, USA of Uber pickups in New York City and exogenous features to 3 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Thessaly, 38334 Volos, Greece 1 https:// www. uber. com/ en- GB/ newsr oom/ compa ny- info/. Vol.:(0123456789)1 3 176 Journal of Big Data Analytics in Transportation (2021) 3:175–195 enhance the learning ability of deep neural networks (DNN). approaches. The proposed method can efectively capture A core indicator of Uber demand is the so-called unit origi- the time-varying spatio-temporal features of Uber demand at nal pickup (UOP), which is the number of successful Uber- diferent boroughs. In addition to introducing the prediction transactions at the platform per unit time (Tong et al. 2017). approach and assessing the value of multiple features in the UOP prediction can beneft Uber platform or other ride-hail- prediction problem, the paper compares the performance of ing services in multiple ways. First, by examining histori- the UBERNET with several competing approaches (e.g., ARI- cal UOP data, the platform can fnd times and geographical MAX, PROPHET, TCN and LSTM) in a number of diferent areas indicating strong demand. Second, it can be used to settings. The results show that the proposed method is more assess incentive mechanisms and dynamic pricing policies. principle and robust when incorporating and exploiting a UOP refects the willingness of users to complete transac- wide range of exogeneous features such as the four sets of tions after adopting new dynamic pricing policies. Finally, it features we utilised in the paper. can be used to optimize ride-hailing services car allocation. Both the popular press and scientifc community have This also allows other taxicab platforms to arrange roaming addressed many social and economic aspects of ride-hailing drivers to customers in advance. Predicting UOP accurately companies such as Uber. A signifcant part of the attention is at the core of the online ride-sharing industry. has been negative, in keeping with overall criticisms of new The basic problem we consider is as follows: let forms of work emerging in the gig economy. Within those { (t0), (t1), …} be a vector time series with elements of a overall complex socioeconomic concerns, improvements number of temporal and spatial features that have been found in short-term demand prediction methodology has several in the literature to explain demand for ride-hailing services. potential benefts. First, the operator may be able to apply Our goal is to predict the count of pickups (Uber or other surge-pricing more accurately. Other authors have noted that ride-hailing services) at the future time t + (where the if surge pricing is efectively predicted and disseminated to time-interval is given), utilising the proposed deep learn- both drivers and riders, a number of key operational deci- ing approach UBERNET. Traditionally, short-term prediction sions become possible, including the ride-hailing company’s problems in transport widely utilise univariate data that are ability to more efciently allocate vehicles, which ultimately generated from specifc sources, e.g., loop detection, GPS helps the efciency and reliability of transport networks. or other types of data (Vlahogianni et al. 2004). A compre- Other directions in which there are discussions is in spatial hensive approach utilising additional geographical, demo- pricing, as well as in spatio-temporal bonus pricing as incen- graphic and social and economic factors has been reported tives for drivers to ofer services in areas with lower levels in the literature to a lesser degree, with such features being of vehicle supply. mainly used in travel behavior analysis to understand who, Second, drivers may be able to reduce idle time and where, and how ride-hailing services are used or what the uncertainty about repositioning, thereby reducing lost earn- efects on demand for other transport modes are. Further- ings. However, we mentioned previously, it is not clear how more, transport demand usually follows a diurnal cycle much of the revenue stream arising from information cer- with, for example, a morning and evening peak, and which tainty will actually go into the pockets of the drivers. That is Uber pickups also exhibit (Chen et al. 2015). In addition, an an important limitation of the extent to which system accu- extensive literature on transport operations has showed the racy can really benefts drivers. importance of inclement weather, special events and other Third, it is possible that third-party providers of ride- short-term events on transport use patterns. Our goal with hailing driver assistance may be able to better capitalise on UBERNET is to utilise such additional operational, social and reliable predictions to provide a number of location-based economic features for the short-term prediction problem to services to drivers, including the potential to earn more. capture the range of spatial and other heterogeniety in the Various incentive mechanisms may also be developed to Uber demand estimation problem, thereby leading to a mul- improve the driver’s bottomline, based on diferent markets tivariate approach to short-term forecasting of ride-hailing served. demand. We fnd that the use of such features within the pro- Fourth, passengers may be able to reduce wait time if posed UBERNET approach improves “real-time” short-term they know that demand for rides is high, thereby either post- demand prediction. poning their trip or using other modes of transport. Ride- The benefts of having more accurate short-term fore- hailing platforms often use reward systems and promotions casts of ride-hailing demand are many, and are reviewed to improve customer savings and boosting of both short- and in detail in the next section. We have proposed UBERNET long-term demand. One of many diferent strategies used as an approach that can formally utilise the multivariate is to provide special discounted prices during specifed architecture while also being able to utilise the correlations times. It is possible to expand this strategy by incentiviz- among diferent features and the long-term dependencies ing passengers to defer their trip or travel by other modes of time series sequences, unlike many other deep learning of transport at times which are predicted to be busy, with 1 3 Journal of Big Data Analytics in Transportation (2021) 3:175–195 177 incentive solutions such as mileage programs or the ability pick up passengers.