Smartphone-based Taxi Applications as Essential Part of Smart City

Abstract

Humanity is on the threshold of a new age where people transform a significant part of reality into the virtual world. Direct face-to-face interaction is converting to communication via social networks. It has many advantages. For example, it is no more necessary to be in the workplace - we can work from home (home-office). Information and communication technologies such as the internet, information transmission, data processing, the rapid development of electronics have allowed us to create a new concept of our cities. These technologies have made the phenomenon of Smart City in recent years. One of the pillars of Smart Cities, without which the project would not work, is the economy of sharing. In our paper, we outline the economics of sharing in road transport as an essential part of smart mobility. This sharing is possible thanks to using digital platforms. We will focus mainly on applications used by taxi services. A significant item of the concept is human. Therefore our research aims to describe the role of people in the system. Without the active support of humans, Smarts Cities could not exist. Finally, we describe the regulatory environment of taxi services at the EU level and in the Slovak Republic.