Preston McAfee
Preston McAfee, distinguished scientist at Google, is an economist who has worked extensively in pricing, auctions, antitrust, business strategy, market design, and computational advertising. He is the author of 130 refereed articles, 14 issued patents and three books. He serves on the board of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. Papers and resume at https://vita.mc4f.ee, LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/prestonmcafee/. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_McAfee
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Quantifying the sustainability impact of Google Maps: A case study of Salt Lake City
Theophile Cabannes
Yechen Li
Marc Nunkesser
2021 (2021) (to appear)
Preview abstract
Google Maps uses current and historical traffic trends to provide routes to drivers. In this paper, we use microscopic traffic simulation to quantify the improvements to both travel time and CO2 emissions from Google Maps real-time navigation. A case study in Salt Lake City shows that Google Maps users are, on average, saving 1.7% of CO2 emissions and 6.5% travel time. If we restrict to the users for which Google Maps finds a different route than their original route, the average savings are 3.4% of CO2 emissions and 12.5% of travel time. These results are based on traffic conditions observed during the Covid-19 pandemic. As congestion gradually builds back up to pre-pandemic levels, it is expected to lead to even greater savings in emissions.
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