All over the world, cities are becoming “smarter.” The improved use of data generated by the transport system (e.g. smart cards data), combined with GPS trackers and citizens’ mobile data enabled the development of a new generation of smarter mobile apps (e.g., Waze) and several local real-time public transport services and trip planners. These technologies have the potential to reduce transport inequalities via two mechanisms. First, governments can develop more efficient and evidence-based public transport plans. Second, citizens have access to better, real-time information about public transport for trip planning and, thus, can make better—i.e., more efficient or cheaper—decisions regarding their everyday mobility. To assess whether citizens’ appropriation of smart mobility—as with their appropriation of any other digital service—depends strongly on having a certain set of socioeconomic and digital attributes, we analyzed both a mobility survey and a digital inequalities survey based on representative samples of adult Uruguayans living in the capital Montevideo. We find that while the use of mobility apps increased in the second half of the 2010s, the adoption of these tools was stratified by traditional digital inequalities, such as type of internet access and digital literacy, and by variables that predict inequalities in both digital and transport fields, such as age, gender and education. As a result, mobility continues to be stratified in favor of those who are more knowledgeable (i.e., tech-savvy) and have greater access to digital technology. Thus, “smart mobility” has failed to ameliorate—and may even exacerbate—transport inequality. Policy implications of these findings are discussed.

中文翻译：

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更智能但更不平等的交通方式？社会经济和数字不平等如何阻碍南半球采用移动应用


在世界各地，城市正在变得“更智能”。更好地使用交通系统生成的数据（例如智能卡数据），结合 GPS 跟踪器和公民的移动数据，从而开发了新一代更智能的移动应用程序（例如 Waze）和一些本地实时公共交通服务和旅行规划器。这些技术有可能通过两种机制减少交通不平等。首先，政府可以制定更高效、更循证的公共交通计划。其次，公民可以获得有关公共交通的更好、更实时的信息，以便进行旅行规划，因此可以就他们的日常出行做出更好（即更高效或更便宜）的决策。为了评估公民对智能出行的挪用（就像他们对任何其他数字服务的挪用一样）是否在很大程度上取决于是否具有一定的社会经济和数字属性，我们分析了一项移动性调查和一项基于居住在首都蒙得维的亚的成年乌拉圭人的代表性样本的数字不平等调查。我们发现，虽然移动应用程序的使用在 2010 年代后半期有所增加，但这些工具的采用受到传统数字不平等（如互联网访问类型和数字素养）以及预测数字和交通领域不平等的变量（如年龄、性别和教育）的分层。因此，移动出行继续分层，有利于那些知识更渊博（即精通技术）并且更容易使用数字技术的人。因此，“智能出行”未能改善甚至可能加剧交通不平等。讨论了这些发现的政策意义。