Urban Mobility and the Smartphone: Transportation, Travel Behavior and Public Policy

Urban Mobility and the Smartphone

Transportation, Travel Behavior and Public Policy

Anne Aguilera

City Mobility Transportation Lab, French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport, Development and Network, Champs sur Marne, France

Virginie Boutueil

City Mobility Transportation Lab, Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, Champs-sur-Marne, France

Table of Contents

Cover image

Title page

Copyright

Contributors

About the Authors

Context (Preface)

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Smartphone and Individual Travel Behavior

Introduction

1. Uses of Time and Activity Schedules

2. On the Move Activities, Transport Time, and Quality of Service of Transport Modes

3. New Mobility Services

Conclusion

Chapter 2. New Mobility Services

Introduction

1. Changes in the Urban Mobility Services Landscape

2. Decoding the Changes in Urban Mobility Services: What Is Really Behind the Shared Mobility Concept?

3. Where Is the Competition Going?

4. Looking Further Down the Road … What Questions Remain for the Future?

Chapter 3. Using Mobile Phone Data to Observe and Understand Mobility Behavior, Territories, and Transport Usage

Introduction

1. What Are Mobile Phone Data?

2. Making Mobile Phone Data Fit for Mobility Analysis

3. Applications of Mobile Phone Data to Travel Behavior Analysis

4. Applications of Mobile Phone Data to Territorial Analysis

5. Applications of Mobile Phone Data to the Transport System

6. Challenges Associated With the Use of Mobile Phone Data

7. Potential Influence of Mobile Phone Data on Mobility Stakeholders

Conclusion

Annexe

Chapter 4. Implications for Public Policy

Introduction

1. New Perspectives for Transport Network Management and Transport Planning

2. Public Challenges Associated With the Emergence of New Transport Modes and Mobility Services

3. The New Challenges of Integrated Mobility Platforms and Mobility-As-A Service

Conclusion

Chapter 5. Impacts and Challenges for Developing Countries

Introduction

1. Recent Trends in Smartphone Ownership and Travel Behavior in Developing Countries

2. New (Smartphone-Enabled) Mobility Services

3. Challenges and Opportunities of Smartphones for Urban Mobility Policy-Making in Developing Economies

4. Taking a Step Back … and Examining Outstanding Issues

Index

Copyright

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Contributors

Anne Aguiléra,     University Paris-Est, LVMT, IFSTTAR, Marne la Vallée, France

Virginie Boutueil

University Paris-Est, LVMT, ENPC, Marne la Vallée, France

University Paris-Est, LVMT, IFSTTAR, Marne la Vallée, France

Julie Chrétien,     University Paris-Est, LVMT, IFSTTAR, Marne la Vallée, France

Florent Le Néchet,     University Paris-Est, LVMT, UPEM, Marne la Vallée, France

Fabien Leurent,     University Paris-Est, LVMT, ENPC, Marne la Vallée, France

Biao Yin,     University Paris-Est, LVMT, ENPC, Marne la Vallée, France

About the Authors

Anne Aguiléra is a senior researcher at the City, Mobility and Transportation Laboratory (LVMT) and a deputy head of the Department of Planning, Mobility and Environment at the French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport, Development and Networks (IFSTTAR). Her current research interests are the impacts of the spread of information and communication technologies and the digital economy on transport systems, transport policies, and the travel behavior of individuals.

Virginie Boutueil is a researcher at École des Ponts ParisTech (ENPC), in the City, Mobility and Transportation Laboratory (LVMT). Her research in the field of mobility socioeconomics focuses on the design and conditions of diffusion of innovative mobility solutions (including, but not limited to, electric mobility solutions and shared mobility solutions). She teaches the analysis of mobility behaviors and the design of mobility services at École des Ponts ParisTech. She is also the deputy director of the Sustainable Mobility Institute Renault-ParisTech (IMD).

Julie Chrétien has an engineering degree from École des Ponts and a master's in urban planning and urban studies from Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée. Her Ph.D. thesis focused on the link between the acceleration in the pace of life, urban lifestyles, and mobility behavior. In the context of a postdoctoral position at LVMT, she is currently analyzing the variability over time of mobility practices and the contribution of digital data to the treatment of these subjects.

Florent Le Néchet is an assistant professor in geography and planning at Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, at LVMT. His research focuses on the formalization of the links between urban forms, transportation infrastructure, and daily travel behavior, using an approach that is both empirical (based on different international databases) and theoretical (dynamic modeling of cities). He is currently involved in an interdisciplinary research project on the use of mobile phone data in mobility analysis.

Fabien Leurent is a professor of systems modeling and technical–economic analysis for transportation networks and territories at École des Ponts ParisTech (ENPC). He is also the deputy head of LVMT, a joint research unit shared by ENPC, IFSTTAR, and UPEM. He leads the ENPC-STIF Chair on the socioeconomic analysis of urban transit and also the ENPC part of the ParisTech-Vinci Chair on the ecodesign of built sets and infrastructure.

Biao Yin is a postdoctoral associate at New York University Abu Dhabi. He joined LVMT after receiving his Ph.D. in 2015 from Université de Technologie de Belfort-Montbéliard, France. His research interests include mobility analysis, traffic operations, land use, and transportation.

Context (Preface)

The smartphone is spreading at exceptional speed, and it is now estimated that one-third of the world population owns a smartphone. However, this figure conceals large gaps, on the one hand between industrialized and developing countries (Poushter, 2016) and on the other hand according to socioeconomic criteria, in particular age and income level.

Nearly three-quarters of North Americans, Taiwanese, and South Koreans, two-thirds of Western Europeans and Australians, and half of Japanese now own a smartphone, as compared with one-third of South Africans and Algerians, one-fifth of Indians, one-quarter of Vietnamese, 15% of Nigerians, and less than 10% of Bangladeshis. Everywhere, progression is fast: indeed, only one-third of Americans and 17% of French had a smartphone at the beginning of the 2010s. Young people are on average much more equipped than the elderly: in France, for example, 99% of 18–24-year-olds now own a smartphone, as compared with less than one-third of people over 70  years of age.

The uses of the smartphone are becoming increasingly diverse and play a bigger and bigger role in our daily life to the point that phenomena of addiction are now being observed (Lee et al., 2014; Samaha and Hawi, 2016). The smartphone is becoming, in particular, an increasingly common tool for access to the Internet (even from home) and is therefore more and more the medium through which we perform our (many) digital activities: online shopping, listening to music, participating in social networks, reading and processing private and work e-mails, searching for a job, etc (Lee, 2015).

However, the smartphone is not just an additional tool for access to the Internet, in particular access while on the move. Its spread is accompanied by profound transformations, both societal (Sarwar and Soomro, 2013) and economic (Kenney et al., 2015). They concern in particular the development of new services (including real-time services) accessible via mobile applications. New actors, new business models (see mobile marketing), and new forms of collaboration between users (e.g., applications based on crowdsourced data) and with the service providers (Heiskala et al., 2016) characterize many of these mobile applications.

From the perspective of individual mobility, the arrival of the smartphone spells three major transformations. The first is part of the general changes in lifestyle brought about by the increasing use of information and communication technology (ICT), in particular mobile ICT (smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc.). In the sphere of mobility, these transformations include not only the temporal and spatial distribution of human activities (shopping, work, leisure, sociability, etc.) but also our relations to space and to travel time, which is enriched by the possibility of new activities (Aguilera et al., 2012; Ben Elia et al., 2018; Dal Fiore et al., 2014). The second transformation concerns the growing mass of quantitative and qualitative information now available, often at low cost and in real time, on travel practices and transportation networks (Chandrasekar, 2015). Finally, the third transformation concerns the penetration of the digital economy into the field of passenger transportation, with the explosion of mobile applications in two main spheres, firstly travel-related information (route calculation, parking information, etc.) and secondly mobility services based on the sharing, even between individuals, of vehicles or journeys. These applications rely not only on the new real-time data accessible via the smartphone (including collaborative data), but also on its capacities to facilitate coordination and payment.

The short- and long-term impacts of these different changes on mobility remain, at present, very uncertain, but they will most probably be substantial (Lyons, 2015). Indeed, they will affect every aspect of mobility: transportation stakeholders, modes of travel, business models (with in particular new prospects for pricing, which will no longer depend on the mode of transportation used but on the mobility service provided), transportation policies, and, of course, the travel behavior of individuals (Canzler and Knie, 2016).

In this area, the main challenge for the coming years is to reconcile the satisfaction of travel needs with the necessity of reducing our ecological footprint and the negative impacts on human health and safety of current mobility practices. Thus, many expectations rest on the ability of the smartphone to help counter the trends observed in recent decades in industrialized countries and more recently in emerging countries. These tendencies concern the development of household motorization and the growing and increasingly individual use of the private car for daily trips (Cervero, 2013; Kutzbach, 2009; Srinivasan et al., 2007), although there are differences between cities depending on their urban organization and the transportation and planning policies they implement (Gössling et al., 2016; Kenworthy, 2017).

Ideally, the smartphone could become a tool for more sustainable mobility, allowing individuals to optimize their travel (routes, modes of transport, parking search, etc.) and to reduce its financial cost (by sharing their vehicle or abandoning car ownership without giving up car use) and its ecological footprint, by adopting more multimodal practices (Astroza et al., 2017) and by using shared modes (Morency et al., 2015; Nijland and van Meerkerk, 2017). From this perspective, digital technology could be a new tool in the armory of sustainable transportation policies. However, digital technology could also undermine public transportation in favor of the car, which acquires new uses with ride-sourcing (Jin et al., 2018), car-pooling, and car-sharing services and potentially becomes more attractive with the availability of new real-time mobile navigation applications.

Our Approach to the Issues at Hand

This book provides a synthesis of theoretical input about, and practical insight into, the transformation of urban mobility by the smartphone, with the threefold objective of (1) clarifying the definitions of some new concepts and objects in mobility studies, (2) accounting for the changes triggered or amplified by the spread of the smartphone, and (3) discussing the implications of these changes for policy-making and research. Urban mobility is approached here as a system of actors, meaning that the perspectives of individual behavior (including lifestyles), the supply of mobility services (including actors, business models), and public policy-making are successively considered and to some extent interrelated.

The core material for this book is an extensive review of academic literature, complemented by systematic observation of the development of smartphone-based mobility services around the world so as, on the one hand, to quantify their development more fully and, on the other hand, to better qualify their position in the competition for urban mobility demand. In addition, case studies are used to provide practical illustrations of the ongoing transformation of mobility services influenced by the dissemination of smartphones.

As the scope of this book is fundamentally international, the results of the analysis will be discussed with respect to a variety of geographical situations. Recognizing the fact that most of the academic literature focuses, whether explicitly or implicitly, on the mobility systems of developed countries, we make a point of exploring—on the basis of a dedicated literature review and dedicated case studies—the specific opportunities and challenges that the spread of smartphones opens up for mobility systems in developing countries.

Overall, our aim is not only to consolidate existing research but also to pick up on weak signals that could help us to anticipate future changes in urban mobility systems as a result of the dissemination of the smartphone.

Who Might Find This Book Helpful?

The role that mobile ICT in general, and smartphones in particular, play in the rapid changes that mobility systems around the world are currently undergoing has been increasingly documented in the academic literature. Yet research on these issues is scattered and the extent, depth, and implications of the changes involved are not yet well understood. The hope is that this book will serve as a common reference for definitions of concepts and objects that have not yet been stabilized, as well as a benchmark against which changes in a particular mobility system can be assessed and related challenges to public policies be anticipated.

This book aims primarily to provide researchers and students in the field of transportation and land-use planning with a useful synthesis of existing research and point them in the direction of topics that may require further research. The international perspective of the book may also help broaden the geographical scope of existing research in this field. Additionally, we hope that this book will be helpful to public policy-makers and mobility practitioners in developing a clearer, more extensive understanding of the underlying drivers of change and possible future pathways for urban mobility systems as a result of the rapid dissemination of smartphones.

Chapter Content

Chapter 1 proposes a review of the recent literature on the relations between ICT, lifestyles, and individual mobility in urban areas, with an emphasis on the transformations associated with the spread of the smartphone (including changes in the use of time, in activity schedules, and in the use of new mobility services).

Chapter 2 examines the role of smartphones in changing the supply of urban mobility services, both from the perspective of what new services have emerged (looking at stakeholders, design features, relevant markets, etc.) and from the perspective of how these services interact with each other or with other, more traditional, transportation modes.

Chapter 3 draws on a dedicated literature review and an ongoing interdisciplinary research project between computer scientists and mobility scholars to discuss how the specific challenges and opportunities opened up by mobile phone data can reshape the field of mobility analysis.

Chapter 4 discusses the main opportunities (especially with regard to new data and new mobility services) for and challenges (especially with regard to the regulation of competition among mobility service providers and the integration of new, smartphone-based mobility services with public transport) to public policy arising from the influence of the smartphone on urban mobility.

Chapter 5 draws on a dedicated literature review to analyze the specific opportunities and challenges raised by the spread of smartphones for urban mobility systems in developing countries, which are characterized by rapid changes in travel demand, lack of synchronization with other urban subsystems, and the existence of substantial populations living in poverty.

References

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Astroza S, Garikapati V.M, Bhat C.R, Pendyala R.M, Lavieri P.S, Dias F.F. Analysis of the impact of technology use on multimodality and activity travel characteristics. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board. 2017;2666:19–28.

Ben-Elia E, Lyons G, Mokhtarian P.L. Epilogue: the new frontiers of behavioral research on the interrelationships between ICT, activities, time use and mobility. Transportation. 2018;45(2):479–497.

Canzler W, Knie A. Mobility in the age of digital modernity: why the private car is losing its significance, intermodal transport is winning and why digitalisation is the key. Applied Mobilities. 2016;1(1):56–67.

Cervero R. Linking urban transport and land use in developing countries. Journal of Transport and Land Use. 2013;6(1):7–24.

Chandrasekar P. Big data and transport modelling: opportunities and challenges. International Journal of Applied Engineering Research. 2015;10(17):38038–38044.

Dal Fiore F, Mokhtarian P.L, Salomon I, Singer M.E. Nomads at last? A set of perspectives on how mobile technology may affect travel. Journal of Transport Geography. 2014;41:97–106.

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Lee Y.K, Chang C.T, Lin Y, Cheng Z.H. The dark side of smartphone usage: psychological traits, compulsive behavior and technostress. Computers in Human Behavior. 2014;31:373–383.

Lyons G. Transport's digital age transition. Journal of Transport and Land Use. 2015;8(2):1–19.

Morency C, Verreault H, Demers M. Identification of the minimum size of the shared-car fleet required to satisfy car-driving trips in Montreal. Transportation. 2015;42(3):435–447.

Nijland H, van Meerkerk J. Mobility and environmental impacts of car sharing in The Netherlands. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. 2017;23:84–91.

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Acknowledgments

We offer our sincere thanks to Julie Chrétien, Florent Le Néchet, Fabien Leurent, and Biao Yin, for contributing to this book their profound knowledge of the use of smartphone data to analyze mobility behaviors, and to Camille Mornon, Kei Tanikawa-Obergon, and Anna Voskoboynikova, for participating in the effort to collect data and analyze the development of new mobility services around the world.

The data collection effort was partly funded through a partnership between École des Ponts ParisTech and the Sustainable Mobility Institute Renault-ParisTech (IMD). The book project received additional funding from IFSTTAR. We are grateful for both sponsorships!

We would like to extend our gratitude to Etienne Côme, Nicolas Coulombel, and Gaële Lesteven for their kind yet thorough reviewing of various chapters of this book. The remaining errors and deficiencies are the responsibility of the authors alone. The administrative team at LVMT, together with our official English proofreader John Crisp, have provided valuable assistance throughout the book project, for which we are very thankful.

Finally, our friends and families have put up with a lot in the making of this book. In appreciation of their patience, their support, and their love, we dedicate it to them, with the promise that we will wait a while before starting the next one…

Chapter 1

Smartphone and Individual Travel Behavior

Anne Aguiléra     University Paris-Est, LVMT, IFSTTAR, Marne la Vallée, France

Abstract

The issue of the links between the development of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) and individual travel has grown in importance and also undergone profound changes in recent years, firstly with the arrival of the Internet and mobile technologies and secondly with the growing interest in society (and in the social sciences) in the subject of mobility (Ben-Elia et al., 2018; Sheller and Urry, 2006; Urry, 2012). One reason is environmental: transport accounts for nearly a quarter of current energy-related carbon dioxide emissions and car travel for more than threequarters of all vehicle kilometers traveled. ICT could reduce our need to travel physically, by providing ways for a growing number of day-to-day activities to be carried out remotely (online shopping, teleworking, videoconferencing, etc.) (Aguiléra et al., 2012). Another reason relates, more broadly, to the way ICT is contributing to changes in lifestyles and, in particular, their spatial dimension (Aguiléra et al., 2012; Hubers et al., 2011; Sasaki and Nishii, 2010; Sheller and Urry, 2006; Schwanen and Kwan, 2008). With the Internet and mobile technologies, there is also growing interest in the consequences of the use of ICT while on the move, of the penetration of the digital economy (in particular the sharing or collaborative economy) into the mobility sphere, and of the massive production of new geolocated data (Wang et al., 2016).

Keywords

Activity schedules; Coordination; Flexibility; Lifestyles; Shared mobility; Travel behaviour; Use of time

Introduction

The issue of the links between the development of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) and individual travel has grown in importance and also undergone profound changes in recent years, firstly with the arrival of the Internet and mobile technologies and secondly with the growing interest in society (and in the social sciences) in the subject of mobility (Ben-Elia et al., 2018; Sheller and Urry, 2006; Urry, 2012). One reason is environmental: transport accounts for nearly a quarter of current energy-related carbon dioxide emissions and car travel for more than three-quarters of all vehicle kilometers traveled. ICT could reduce our need to travel physically, by