Policy Brief: 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.