Smart Hitchhiking: A Real-Time Dynamic Solution to optimize urban commutes

Abstract

Escalating population growth of the urban metropolis introduces many issues and challenges such as traffic congestions and rising travel costs along with environmental pollution. To reduce and fix the impact of these issues ride-sharing solution has emerged as a potential candidate; existing solutions often fall short due to static ride-matching models, delays in communication, and no real-time adaptability. This paper presents Smart Hitchhiking (SHi)—a dynamic and real-time ride-sharing solution designed to cater the limitations of existing market by optimizing urban commutes. The proposed solution has state-of-the-art features such as overlapping route identification, partial trip matching, and route correlation analysis, moving beyond traditional origin-destination models. Developed as a modular client-server architecture with React and MySQL, SHi improves scalability, real-time interaction, and secure data handling. The system is evaluated on an AVD emulator which ensures that SHi offers an efficient, adaptive, and user-friendly alternative to existing ride-sharing applications.