How smart is your smartcard?: measuring travel behaviours, perceptions, and incentives

The widespread adoption of automated fare collection (AFC) systems by public transport authorities around the world means that, increasingly, people carry and use passive sensors (embedded inside of public transit tickets) to record their daily movements. Unlike mobile phones, the records held by AFC systems provide a rich and detailed source of data about peoples’ transport habits: times of travel, modalities, destinations, trip durations, and fares paid. In this work, we explore the extent that this data offers the possibility to both build and measure future of travel-based ubiquitous computing applications. We focus on two potential endusers: first, how travellers may be aided by feedback mechanisms in order to re-align misperceptions of their travel behaviour and leverage this data to change their habits. In particular, we analyse differences between 85 travellers’ surveyed perceptions of their public transport habits and their actual usage of the system. Second, how transpo...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: HUC
• Authors: Neal Lathia, Licia Capra
• Keywords: HUC 2011, Human Computer Interaction, Human Factors Design, Incentive Mechanisms, Information Systems Applications