The TravelSmarter mobile app was created as part of the OUTSMART European project, in which Amey, the UK subsidiary of Ferrovial Servicios, participated along with the Intelligent Infrastructure Innovation Centre Foundation (CI3) to develop applications based on the Future Internet in the area of advanced urban services.
The system, which seeks to solve traffic problems by providing data on the main transport alternatives, has been tested in the English city of Birmingham.
Picture: OUTSMART Annual Report 2013[/caption]
Birmingham is the second most populous metropolitan area in England, after London, with approximately 3.8 million people and 250,000 commutes per week. For this reason, the Birmingham area and its public transport system were chosen for the pilot test of the prototype solution proposed by OUTSMART in the area of sustainable transport: the TravelSmarter platform.
There are a number of public transport operators in the Birmingham corridor, operating buses, trains, traffic alerts, bike lanes, taxis, etc., each one with its own network of sensors, services and points of access to information. One of the first challenges of the TravelSmarter platform was to gain access to all the information and sensor networks, which are based on a range of technologies, and make them available to the platform to enable new services to be developed.
The TravelSmarter platform was developed in three levels.
TravelSmarter Platform
- Picture: OUTSMART Annual Report 2013
Birmingham pilot
Birmingham is the second most populous metropolitan area in England, after London, with approximately 3.8 million people and 250,000 commutes per week. For this reason, the Birmingham area and its public transport system were chosen for the pilot test of the prototype solution proposed by OUTSMART in the area of sustainable transport: the TravelSmarter platform. [caption id="attachment_34751" align="aligncenter" width="601"]
- In the first level, information on planning and optimising travel was obtained in order to offer the best combination of transport options depending on the user's circumstances and preferences (access to information on transit status: buses, trains, traffic incidents, congestion, accidents and weather).
- In the second level, a system of incentivizing users to take options that were more sustainable or that avoided congestion at that particular time was introduced. Users were offered discounts for walking or cycling, and contests were organized to reward the person who reduced their emissions the most, or the person who walked or cycled the most in the week.
- In the third level, an "open ecosystem" of access to the platform was provided in which local businesses could offer discounts as part of the incentives to reduce emissions or adopt more sustainable modes of transport, in exchange for gaining visibility within the platform.