Increasing Bicycle Usage in Smart Cities

Abstract

The emergence and market uptake of technologies for mobile and ubiquitous computing is opening a window of opportunities for innovative applications that promote cycling and walking in new forms. These technologies allow affordable and accessible ways of tracking the walking and cycling of individuals which, when combined with new community-centric applications, promise to unleash the behavior-change potential to unprecedented levels. A particular synergy is between local businesses, who are interested in segmenting their customer base to attract new clients who arrive by bicycle or on foot; and potential customers, interested in obtaining discounts. Likewise, cities and governments are interested in attributing benefits to people choosing to cycle or walk. However, achieving so requires applications that are able to trace individual mobility choices, at the same time respecting both technical and social requirements. This paper sheds some new light on the delicate balance between the the social and technical requirements that determine the actual outcome of behavior change towards more sustainable mobility in smart cities. We focus on a particular application, called Cycle-to-Shop, which is under development in the context of the TRACE H2020 project.