In this chapter, we present a methodological approach for Smart Mobility that integrates three key features: prediction, optimization, and personalization. They are integrated in such a way that when a travel menu is offered, predicted conditions are considered in the attributes of alternatives and optimized system-level policies are maintained. Similarly, user-level estimations and updates are used by prediction and optimization methods at the system-level in order to represent the population with most up-to-date behavioral estimates. Furthermore, a simulation-based evaluation methodology enables to validate the performance of prediction, optimization, and personalization before Smart Mobility is implemented in real-life. Two case studies are presented based on the proposed methodologies together with platforms that facilitate their application. Potential benefits of the proposed methodologies are evaluated which can be classified into user-level and system-level benefits. User-level benefits include consumer surplus, waiting times, etc., and system-level is concerned with congestion, throughput, system-wide travel time, etc. As there is normally a tradeoff between the individual decision-making and system-wide decision-making, Smart Mobility bridges them together with appropriate methodologies on each end. For example, for our Flexible Mobility on Demand case study, we observe 10%–20% reduction in volume-to-capacity ratio as a system-level benefit. Moreover, we see that the tradeoff between consumer surplus and operator profit can be managed with an appropriate objective function. ... Read more

Urban traffic congestion has led to an increasing emphasis on management measures for more efficient utilization of existing infrastructure. In this context, this paper proposes a novel framework that integrates real-time optimization of control strategies (tolls, ramp metering rates, etc.) with the generation of traffic guidance information using predicted network states for dynamic traffic assignment systems. The efficacy of the framework is demonstrated through a fixed demand dynamic toll optimization problem, which is formulated as a non-linear program to minimize predicted network travel times. A scalable efficient genetic algorithm that exploits parallel computing is applied to solve this problem. Experiments using a closed-loop approach are conducted on a large-scale road network in Singapore to investigate the performance of the proposed methodology. The results indicate significant improvements in network-wide travel time of up to 9% with real-time computational performance. ... Read more

The urban mobility landscape is witnessing widespread changes with the emergence of several disruptive technologies including mobility-as-a-service and automated vehicles. The convergence of these two developments in the form of automated mobility-on-demand (AMoD) services (i.e., a system of shared driverless taxis) is receiving growing interest from industry, governments and researchers worldwide as a promising solution to meet mobility needs in the future in a sustainable manner. However, there is a large degree of uncertainty surrounding the potential adoption of these systems, and their impact on individual travel/activity patterns and the transportation system as a whole. In this context, this paper attempts to gain insights into behavioral preferences and attitudes towards AMoD through a novel context-aware app-based stated preferences survey conducted in Singapore. The SP survey leverages a state-of-the-art smartphone-based platform (Future Mobility Sensing) and its ability to collect revealed preference (RP) and contextual data. Logit mixture models accounting for inter-person heterogeneity and panel effects were estimated on a sample of 2500 observations from 350 respondents. The results indicate the presence of heterogeneity in the valuation of in-vehicle travel time and out-of-vehicle travel time and significant differences across demographic categories. An analysis of price elasticity of demand for AMoD indicates a higher elasticity for AMoD taxi followed by AMoD shared19 taxi and AMOD mini-bus. The importance of modeling inertia in switching from the currently used mode is also highlighted. The results have important policy implications and the models have applications within detailed activity-based microsimulation models to examine the impact of AMoD in future scenarios. ... Read more

This paper presents a systematic way of understanding and modeling traveler behavior in response to on-demand mobility services. We explicitly consider the sequential and yet inter-connected decision-making stages specific to on-demand service usage. The framework includes a hybrid choice model for service subscription, and three logit mixture models with inter-consumer heterogeneity for the service access, menu product choice and opt-out choice. Different models are connected by feeding logsums. The proposed modeling framework is essential for accounting the impacts of real-time on-demand system’s dynamics on traveler behaviors and capturing consumer heterogeneity, thus being greatly relevant for integrations in multi-modal dynamic simulators. The methodology is applied to a case study of an innovative personalized on-demand real-time system which incentivizes travelers to select more sustainable travel options. The data for model estimation is collected through a smartphone-based context-aware stated preference survey. Through model estimation, lower values of time are observed when the respondents opt to use the reward system. The perception of incentives and schedule delay by different population segments are quantified. These results are fundamental in setting the ground for different behavioral scenarios of such a new on-demand system. The proposed methodology is flexible to be applied to model other on-demand mobility services such as ride-hailing services and the emerging mobility as a service. ... Read more