Abstract: In order to better understand the travel behavior of taxies and evaluate taxi operation efficiency, this paper proposed a taxi-operation-and-management-oriented work flow for processing big floating car data (FCD); calculated a set of taxi operation indicators; and analysed taxi operation characteristics on weekdays, weekends as well as public holidays based on GPS data during one month collected by taxies in Shanghai. It is found that daily average idle taxi ratio reaches 39.1%, close to the upper bound of the critical interval. The idle taxi ratio varies significantly across space and time within one day. When compared with a normal weekday, sunday and public holiday are characterized by relatively low operation time and travelling time with passengers, and hence relatively low taxi operation efficiency. More countermeasures should be conducted to improve the capability of taxi management.

Key words: floating car, taxi, operation, Shanghai