Smartphone Applications and Data Impacting Transportation

Demographic shifts, improvements in computing power and mapping technology, the use of cloud computing, and changes in wireless communication —coupled with the growth of data availability and data sharing —are changing the way people travel. Increasingly, mobility consumers are turning to smartphone “apps” for a wide array of transportation activities including: vehicle routing, real-time data on congestion, information regarding roadway incidents and construction, parking availability, and real-time transit arrival predictions. Travel time savings (e.g., high occupancy vehicle lanes available to users of shared-ride services); financial savings (e.g., dynamic pricing providing discounts for peak and off-peak travel and for choosing low-volume routes); incentives (e.g., offering points, discounts, or lotteries); and gamification (e.g., use of game design elements in a non-game context) are among the key factors driving end-user growth of smartphone transportation applications.