Smart Urban Mobility Innovations: A Comprehensive Review and Evaluation

Recent smart urban mobility innovations such as intelligent transportation systems, electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, demand-responsive transportation, shared transportation, and mobility-as-a-service are consistently identified as the panacea to many of the economic, social and environmental effects associated with private vehicles—including road congestion, urban sprawl, social exclusion, increased costs, crashes, emissions, and environmental degradation. One of the strategies of many smart urban mobility policies is to view the transportation system from a holistic perspective to seek reduction of negative effects and an improve performance. Nonetheless, given the rapid technological advances in the transportation sector, there is a need to identify and evaluate primary smart mobility innovations from a sustainability perspective. This article presents a thorough technology review and evaluation of the main smart mobility innovations identified in the literature. The study has identified and categorized six main smart mobility innovations most commonly discussed within the literature including: (a) intelligent transport systems; (b) alternative fuel systems; (c) driving automation systems; (d) shared mobility services; (e) demand responsive transport; and (f) integrated mobility systems. Furthermore, this article includes a brief description of their characteristics, applications, and also evaluates their sustainability according to their proposed impacts on transport safety, road congestion, energy consumption, the environment, and accessibility.