{"id":3993,"date":"2023-06-27T07:33:08","date_gmt":"2023-06-27T07:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/innovationisrael.org.il\/en\/?post_type=report&p=3379"},"modified":"2023-11-15T11:04:08","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T11:04:08","slug":"smart-transportation","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/innovationisrael.org.il\/en\/article\/smart-transportation\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart Transportation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The field of transportation, both in Israel and around the world, faces revolutionary changes expected to take place in coming years. Motor vehicles are becoming smart and computerized systems that will help the human driver reach his destination efficiently, comfortably and safely and, that at some point, will even replace him as the driver. This revolution will have far-reaching ramifications on humanity as a whole in a range of fields: from traffic to the entire culture of mobility. Questions such as where we will live, how will we travel from one place to another, how private and public transportation will operate \u2013 are all open questions to which an answer has yet to emerge. In fact, the transition from a model of vehicle ownership to one of transportation as a personally tailored service, rich in information and connectivity technologies, may completely transform a range of human activities and create unpredictable economic and social opportunities and challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Almost everyone in the world using a public transport smartphone application is familiar with the Moovit app. But Moovit offers much more than information about the arrival time of the next bus. Behind the useful app stands one of the most successful smart transportation companies in the world. If developments continue according to the current trend, Moovit will likely become an integral part of the way in which we use public transport in coming decades. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yovav Meydad<\/strong>, VP of Products and Marketing at Moovit<\/strong>, joined the company about four years ago. Already then, Moovit, which received assistance in the app’s development stage, as part of the Early Stage Incentive Program operated by the Innovation Authority’s Startup Division, had a million users \u2013 mainly in Israel and in a limited number of other destinations worldwide. Between 2013-2017, Moovit expanded and reached 80 million users by providing its service globally, in more than 1500 cities in 78 countries. Today, it is the leading public transport application in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moovit’s systems rely on information about public transport lines. In many cities around the world, this information is made available to the developers by the public transport authority in the relevant city or country, so that they can assimilate it into their app, just as Moovit has done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “At the same time”, Meydad says, “there are hundreds of cities around the world in which the information does not exist digitally or exists in a form that is inaccessible to the developers. In order to enable the users in those cities to use Moovit, it was necessary to chart the public transport information with the help of local users. This is where a tool we have developed comes into play. The tool, called Transit Data Editor, is an internet tool that runs in the browser and enables local people to map their knowledge of their city’s public transport. This includes information such as location of stations, names of lines, their schedules etc. These people act voluntarily, sometimes together with a few others, for the benefit of all, similar to the Wikipedia model. The result enables the residents of both large and smaller cities to make their city’s public transport more accessible, convenient, available and efficient for the general public. We have built a large community that today numbers more than 200 thousand local editors (‘Mooviters’) in approximately 150 cities worldwide.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The members of the Moovit community play an active role in realizing the vision and, thanks to them, a new city is added to the app every day. “We currently have approximately 2000 city projects at various stages of mapping”, Meydad explains. “In other companies, if the information isn’t officially accessible, the service just doesn’t exist in that city. This means that in many cities, Moovit is the only company in possession of public transport information.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another of Moovit’s products is Moovit Carpool \u2013 a tool that connects drivers and passengers who want to travel from one place to another. “Over time we added other mobility solutions that serve our users, including comparison of different forms of mobility \u2013 public transport, taxis, shared bicycles and carpooling”, says Meydad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The third group of products offered by Moovit is ‘Smart Transit Suite’ that is helping make cities smarter. “Over the years, we have made contact with public transport companies around the world and observed needs for which there is no answer today”, Meydad says. “Using the information that we gather from Moovit users, we can reach more conclusions regarding the nature of people’s mobility within a metropolis. Until now, attaining this information was complex and required public surveys \u2013 an expensive, inaccurate and limited process.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Our technology enables drawing of conclusions by analyzing the mobility of the app’s millions of users in the city. Among the questions analyzed are: where are they travelling back and forth? which mode of transportation do they use? If they use public transport, which line did they use and at which stations did they get on and off? This is a product called Moovit Urban Mobility Analytics \u2013 a tool for analyzing urban mobility that is aimed at clients who are large entities, city planners, public transport authorities etc. The tool provides insights and assists these organizations in improving and streamlining the city’s mobility processes.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “This is a fascinating period for the world of transportation that is currently in the midst of a real revolution”, Meydad says. “In order to illustrate the changes occurring in this world, we have divided the urban mobility world into four levels and created an abstract model that we call Urban Mobility Stack. The first level of this model is that of the physical infrastructures – trains, bridges, roads etc. Above that is the level of the traffic laws and rules that help ensure the prevention of chaos while using the infrastructures. The next level up is that of the fleet of motor vehicles themselves and the final level is that of the interface with which public transport has been used for the past century \u2013 the manner in which bus and train schedules were checked, journeys paid for etc.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\nMoovit’s Vision of Future Smart Transportation<\/h4>\n\n\n\n