Riding Transit in New Technological Environment: Smartphone Transit Apps and Transit Use

Abstract

The virtual technological environment is shaping the way people make trips. More and more transit agencies provide smartphone transit apps to promote transit use and user experience. However, the impact of transit apps is largely unknown. This doctoral dissertation focuses on how and to what extent smartphone transit apps impact people’s travel behavior. The research starts with a systematic literature review. Studies in three dimensions are implemented to respond to the identified research gaps. Section 2 overviews the current practice of transit apps in 295 major US transit providers. Based on interviews with 21 transit industry leaders, the study synthesizes the perceived benefits and costs of transit apps and identifies challenges and the corresponding strategies. Section 3 examines the impact of transit apps on bus ridership at the aggregate level. This study proposes a novel model named Pattern-driven Long-term Intervention Effect Analysis (PLIEA) to quantify the changing impacts of a transit app over time. Results show that the VIA goMobile app significantly restored bus ridership in San Antonio. About 6.2% of bus trips could have been lost without the app. Section 4 is a field experiment that assesses the influence of a transit app on people's travel behaviors at the disaggregate level. A high-quality transit app is installed on 20 participants’ smartphones as the experiment intervention. This section demonstrates how the CapMetro app encourages transit use, especially among younger adults who are new to the city. Collectively, the dissertation study establishes a comprehensive assessment framework to evaluate how smartphone transit apps, as part of a virtual technological environment, influence people’s travel behavior.