Understanding Users of Integrated Mobility Platforms
The transport industry is evolving rapidly, with integrated mobility platforms - apps or systems combining different transport modes - transforming urban travel. Revealing travel needs and user preferences to design integrated mobility platforms that promote the use of sustainable transport modes and prioritise broader societal benefits over mere profitability must be a priority. Understanding user preferences allows policies to align technology with public sector goals, like equitable access and environmental sustainability, ensuring the technology serves everyone well and supports comprehensive urban planning.
This approach is crucial to achieve smoother traffic flows, reducing congestion, and greener travel choices, thereby bridging the gap between technology and user needs to develop more sustainable and inclusive urban mobility solutions.
Data currently collected by existing platforms is insufficient to analyse users' travel behaviour and preferences. Collection systems are hindered by non-exhaustive choices and selection bias, among other limitations. Supporting integrated mobility platforms requires collecting and storing shareable data that helps to understand travel choices. Surveys and focus groups are key instruments to understand behaviour.
This project works over two phases:
- Phase 1 develops a protocol for integrated mobility platforms to collect and store shareable information to understand travel choices. By investigating the information needed for formulating or supporting public policies, what can be legally tracked and what is feasible to track, and what biases and other limitations challenge the data’s fitness-for-purpose, the data collection protocol helps authorities make informed decisions about where and when mobility platform data can help carry out pubic policy mandates and where and when it cannot.
- Phase 2 explores the nuances of user preferences, travel needs, satisfaction levels and behavioural patterns. This phase uncovers insights essential for the design of user-centric mobility solutions that promote sustainable mobility patterns and contribute to deliver broader societal benefits. Given the lack of comprehensive available data from existent integrated mobility platforms, this project phase uses a combination of surveys and focus groups.