An Automated Taxi Booking and Scheduling System

In Amman, the capital city of Jordan, the transportation system is very poor and lacks organization. The only available transportation is busses and taxis. Busses do not follow time schedules and do not have designated bus stops, while taxis are available in large numbers and are more flexible than busses. This results in a high demand on taxis by customers, but unfortunately, there are no taxi parkings, central offices or a booking system for the large number of taxis. Instead taxi drivers orbit the streets of Amman looking for customers randomly and at the same time customers have to walk to main streets to find a taxi. This creates many problems, such as congestion caused by the taxis, increase in oil consumption and time wasting caused by random movement of taxis. This study proposes an automated taxi booking and scheduling system for the taxis available in Amman. The system provides a convenient, assured and safe booking for both taxi drivers and registered customers through mobile devices. The automated taxi booking system was tested and validated under different simulation scenarios. The simulation results show that the automated taxi booking and scheduling system has a clear impact on saving time and oil consumption for taxis.