How smartphones can improve public transit

It can even improve user experience and transport planning for informal transport systems. Now, as more cities explore using Wi-Fi-enabled transport services, can Internet access encourage more people to switch from cars to mass transit?

Though Wi-Fi has been offered on some transport systems for many years, it has not yet become widespread. That may be changing, as cities worldwide are experimenting with offering Wi-Fi on buses and metro systems. As of , there were about one billion smartphones users worldwide, and this number is expected to grow to 2. Most of these services for buses and metros have been launched in the past year. Wi-Fi can make transport systems more appealing to potential users, and preliminary evidence suggests that this may translate into higher ridership.

Multiple studies from the United States suggest that there is strong demand for Wi-Fi on transport services. Research on whether this demand translates to increased ridership is still in early stages. A recent study indicates that ridership on this route was expected to be 2. The cost of providing Wi-Fi service on this route — which carries about 1. Even in less wealthy cities where smartphones are not as prevalent, Wi-Fi may be an important part of the future of mass transit.

Both Waze and other crowdsourced data apps, like Moovit and GasBuddy, deploy competition and status seeking to drive desired behavioral change.

In some cases, these apps provide leaderboards as a competitive gamification mechanism to further increase engagement. The urge to conform to established social norms can be a powerful motivator.

This force is evident in the mutual ratings systems deployed in a number of transportation apps, particularly those where trust and security are a concern. Ridesourcing services, such as Lyft and Uber, allow passengers to rate their driver and drivers to rate their passengers Uber, The driver star rating is presented to passengers and used by Lyft and Uber to weed out underperforming or problematic drivers.

The passenger rating is presented to drivers when they are agreeing to pick up a hail request, and they have the option to reject if the star rating is too low.

These generate subtly different but nonetheless firm social pressures to be a "good" participant in the ecosystem. Such mutual pressures not only ensure smooth operation of the service and a great ride for customers, but they may also attract additional users to the service given their implied promise of a trustworthy and safe experience.

It is important to note that improving safety e. A variant of conforming to social norms is the use of shadow policing as deployed by carsharing services, like Zipcar and car2go. This takes the form of a requirement to report vehicle damage at the beginning of a carsharing reservation Zipcar, It provides a strong incentive to users to both avoid blame for damage by making an early report and to avoid damaging the vehicle in the first place since the chance of being reported by the next user is high.

While this mechanism was deployed long before smartphone apps arrived, apps for both services are now easing this reporting and making it easier to track the condition of a vehicle before booking car2go, Some apps are generating entirely new social norms and using them to attract users. The PlugShare electric vehicle services app encourages private owners of electric vehicle charging stations to share their equipment with other users of the PlugShare app.

This is currently a fee-free service, but PlugShare encourages beneficiaries to leave tokens of thanks, such as gift cards or a bottle of wine Tesla, This new norm encourages existing sharers to continue providing free electricity, and other PlugShare users to join the community.

Social psychology is rich with heuristics and interventions that purport to change human behavior in response to social cues or pressures. Incentives, rewards, and loyalty programs are a long-standing mechanism for changing behavior. Retailers have long issued "punch cards" to reward loyalty and repetitive behavior. Increasingly, smartphones applications are using both broadcast and segmented incentives in an effort to impact behavior, often through gamification.

Psychologists and marketing professionals have argued that the closer a user gets to a reward, the more motivated they become to follow through Wax, Transportation apps deploy a wide range of incentives. They have also advertised a tiered pricing incentive for existing drivers to encourage heavier use of their service by drivers.

Incentives are also widely used outside of on-demand ride services. A variant of the classic financial incentive is to offer points or non-monetary currency, much as airlines have offered for decades through frequent flyer programs. The GasBuddy app offers non-monetary currency by rewarding users with points for posting and updating a gasoline price. Accumulated points may be redeemed to participate in prize raffles.

By forecasting a CO2 balance for the trip, the app awards or penalizes ReCoins based on whether or not a user saves more CO2 than the forecast estimates for that trip.

The currency can be used to "buy" offsets for other trips that have higher CO2 emissions. More generally, transportation app usage of points are typically categorized into one or more of four types Zichermann, :. Experience points: Points are awarded for simply participating on a regular basis in the app. Waze and Moovit are prime examples of awarding experience points for basic interactions.

Such repeated awards create habits of using the app and associated services. Redeemable points: These points are awarded or purchased in-app and redeemable within the app ecosystem.

These are common for airline frequent flyer programs and are also used by Amtrak and some rental car companies. Not surprisingly, they have considerable potential for keeping users entirely inside a given transportation service. Skill points: Such points are awarded for the completion of a particular task in-app or using the service. An example is GasBuddy, which awards specific blocks of points for reporting gas prices.

Waze has a complex system of points awarded for different tasks, such as "resolve 50 map problems" and "complete map edits" Waze, While not explicitly involving points, some services, like Scoot Networks, in San Francisco progressively reveal app functionality in return for users completing important training and qualification tasks like learning how to ride an electric scooter.

Reputation points: The mutual rating systems provided by Lyft, Uber, and other ridesourcing companies through their smartphone apps are a form of reputation points, forming the basis of mutual trust in their services. Incentives in the form of discounts on third-party services or products are a common motivator across retail and advertising.

Transportation apps and services are also starting to explore their potential. Public transit agencies, like TriMet, are experimenting with pushing location-aware promotions to encourage ridership growth on new and existing transportation lines.

In Montreal, the STMMerci public transit app rewards riders with location and use-targeted discounts from enrolled merchants and 1, event partners to reward riders based on how often they use public transportation. Non-currency incentives can be just as effective as monetary ones when delivered directly, and better yet, they can compound the benefits of monetary incentives when concurrently provided.

Indeed, many of the other mechanisms discussed in earlier sections are non-financial. It is clear that behavioral mechanisms from economics and psychology are already being deployed widely in transportation apps, with a variety of benefits.

Some of these benefits include:. Sometimes these economic and social psychological mechanisms are deployed for the sole benefit of the app developer. More commonly, however, these mechanisms are driving both app usage and positive benefits to the consumers and the wider transportation system. Public agencies have not been as successful as private app developers in fully benefiting from their apps or the data that they make available for private apps. For example, public transit agencies open up their real-time arrivals data, and both the apps and users benefit, but it may also be worthwhile considering ways to bring benefits back to the agencies perhaps in the form of sharing real-time usage data to help operators improve services.

The wide usage of behavioral economics and social psychological principles in apps suggests the importance of understanding the theory and practice of behavioral change in the context of smartphone apps for transportation.

Additional work would help to test some of the hypotheses and build on anecdotal evidence that successful behavioral change mechanisms from other sectors can be usefully deployed to change transportation behavior.

The next chapter reviews opportunities e. Table of Contents. Previous Next. These mechanisms include: Cognitive Impacts: How apps mitigate cognitive difficulties and drive new and different usage of the transportation system. Cognitive Impacts Smartphone apps are able to mitigate a number of cognitive difficulties, principally by reducing the cognitive effort required to make sense of complex situations and the steps required to achieve specific tasks.

Actual and Perceived Control App designers typically agree on the importance of user experience, interface, simplicity, reliability, and performance to designing a successful smartphone application. Trust For a smartphone app to be effective, it usually has to meet the minimum standard of delivering on what is promised. Reframing Norms and Defaults of Transportation Choices Mobility apps are increasingly breaking traditional travel norms and instituting new patterns and habits.

Today, smartphone users can use their devices to match themselves with other travelers to carpool, hire a driver, and rent their personal bicycle or vehicle, changing a number of different behavioral norms: Carpooling apps are breaking the norm that getting in a car with strangers is necessarily a bad thing. Price and Value Impacting App Adoption and Usage Choices Transportation apps on smartphones may shape behavior by changing perceptions on price and value. Information Availability Transportation of any kind is a complex activity, requiring integration of multiple kinds of information to successfully execute any given trip.

Transportation apps act to address this information availability problem in a number of ways: Schedule information apps, which gather and parse public transit schedule data, static or dynamic, and present it more simply and accessibly for the user.

Social Pressure Facilitating connections into, and awareness of, social networks and social messaging are bedrock features of the smartphone app ecosystem, whether transportation-focused or otherwise. Delivery of Incentives Incentives, rewards, and loyalty programs are a long-standing mechanism for changing behavior. More generally, transportation app usage of points are typically categorized into one or more of four types Zichermann, : Experience points: Points are awarded for simply participating on a regular basis in the app.

Conclusion It is clear that behavioral mechanisms from economics and psychology are already being deployed widely in transportation apps, with a variety of benefits. Some of these benefits include: Alleviating cognitive burdens with powerful search tools e. The participants found that any autonomy lost by handing over their keys could be regained through apps providing real-time information about transit schedules, delays and shops and services along the routes.

Though the sample size is small, the researchers dug deep into participants' reactions. The results could have a dramatic effect on public transportation planning, and certainly will catch the attention of planners and programmers alike.

By encouraging the development of apps that make commuting easier, transit agencies can drastically, and at little cost, improve the ridership experience and make riding mass transit more attractive. The point is for transit agencies to provide enough information to put riders in control of their experience and have greater choice in when and where to ride. People don't want to feel they are at the mercy of paper schedules, even if they are, and there's nothing worse than waiting for buses that may or may not be on time.

Transit agencies are catching on. A growing number offer real-time schedule information and updates on delays at stations, online and via smartphone apps, said Tom Radulovich.

Although loads of data is no substitute for frequent, and punctual, service, smartphone apps will be essential for attracting new riders, serving casual riders and in neighborhoods or regions with few transit options, Radulovich said.

Latitude chose Boston and San Francisco for its study because there is a relative abundance of information about public transit. Both cities provide open-source data to developers who can create any number of apps.

More than 30 apps have been created with data provided by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.