Connected Mobility and Changes in Travel Practices

This article examines potential changes in the ways that people move in space, induced by access to mobile Internet on a smartphone. The first section reviews current trends in urban and inter-urban individual travel behaviour in France over the past 25 years. The second section identifies three types of mobile services now available on the go: i) information services designed to provide assistance (choosing an itinerary, a means of transport, etc.); ii) access to new digital content in mobile situations, which significantly broadens the range of mobile activities and thus modifies the perception and use that can be made of transport time; and iii) the development of new mobile services supported by the advent of digital technology in the field of human transport. The third section discusses the implications of each of these services for travel behaviour, especially the use of various means of transport. Two types of effect are distinguished: optimization and sharing. The expectations placed on smartphones to regulate mobility on a collective scale have to be reconsidered in light of these effects.