There are roughly 200 million taxi rides in New York City each year. Exploiting an understanding of taxi supply and demand could increase the efficiency of the city’s taxi system. In the New York city, people use taxi in a frequency much higher than any other cities of US. Instead of booking a taxi by phone one day ahead of time, New York taxi drivers pick up passengers on street. The ability to predict taxi ridership could present valuable insights to city planners and taxi dispatchers in answering questions such as how to position cabs where they are most needed, how many taxis to dispatch, and how ridership varies over time.

Our project focuses on predicting the number of taxi pickups given a 10 minute time window and a location within New York City.