Evaluating Crowdsourcing as a VMT Reduction Tool to Support Smart Cities Initiatives

Abstract:

Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is an indicator of vehicular emissions, which impacts climate change. Various stakeholders aim at reducing VMT to cause reductions in emissions. This research explores the use of crowdsourcing in supporting the efforts of the stakeholders in reducing VMT among college students at California State University Long Beach. Crowdsourcing is emerging as a very promising tool in finding solutions to problems otherwise impossible to solve without a collective human intelligence. A smartphone application is developed to collect travel data and behavior of 55 college students as participants. The behavior is tracked after providing advance information on parking availability on the university campus. It is observed that VMT reductions occur from Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday with car users and Monday through Thursday with transit bus users. The largest reduction of 4% occurs with car usage on Thursday. On the same day, the highest reduction in VMT of 5% occurs with bus usage. Thus, crowdsourcing information on campus parking showed that VMT reduction is effective with the small number of participants involved in this pilot study.

Publications:

Evaluating Crowdsourcing as a VMT Reduction Tool to Support Smart Cities Initiatives (Full Report)

Research Brief

Authors:

SHAILESH CHANDRA

Dr. Chandra is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and Construction Engineering Management at California State University Long Beach (CSULB). He obtained his MS and PhD in civil engineering from Texas A&M University in 2009 and 2012, respectively. Dr. Chandra has more than ten years of experience in transportation research focused on first/last mile transport connectivity, urban freight and sustainability. He has been a principal investigator (PI) for several projects funded by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT). Dr. Chandra has also been guiding several graduate and undergraduate students in transportation research at CSULB. Five students have already graduated with MS degrees. Currently, he is an advisor to five students who are working on various transportation-related research projects.

RUTVIZ VYAS

Mr. Rutviz Vyas is a graduate student in the Department of Computer Engineering & Computer Science at California State University Long Beach (CSULB). Mr. Vyas completed his undergraduate studies in Computer Engineering at Gujarat Technical University, India, in 2018. Mr. Vyas specializes in smartphone application development. His research interests include the application of algorithms and computer programming in transportation engineering and planning.

RAVI MAZIN

Mr. Ravi Mazin is an undergraduate student in the Department of Civil Engineering & Construction Engineering Management at California State University Long Beach. His research interests include data collection and analysis pertaining to transportation engineering and planning.

Published:

April 2020

Keywords:

Vehicle miles traveled

Crowdsourcing

Smartphone

Driving

Ridership