CAPRI: Congestion And Parking Relief Incentives Hossein Karkeh Abadi, Chinmoy Mandayam, Jia Shuo Yue, Chenguang Zhu, Deepak Merugu, Balaji Prabhakar

Decongesting campus road networks using incentives

Transportation networks and congestion

•  Cost of congestion in wasted fuel and time1

•  United States: $121 billion in 2011 •  Estimated to cross $199 billion in 2020

•  Traffic causes 31% of all US CO2 emissions2

•  Public transit: overcrowding •  Current solutions:

•  Congestion pricing, road rationing •  Viewed as just another tax •  Usually requires enforcement and political mandate

•  Capacity addition: expensive and limited

Our approach

•  “Congestion is a 10% phenomenon” •  A small reduction in the load can lead to a significant

drop in congestion •  Incentivize decongestion: carrots, not sticks

•  Accurate sensing of user behavior •  Pay random chunky rewards instead of small, deterministic

payments

Incentives

Boost day: 3x credits for eligible trips on chosen day of the week.

“in games with low stakes, players are more

risk-seeking”

Congestion problems at Stanford

•  Agreement with Santa Clara County:

•  Limit peak hour traffic •  Fines and restrictions for

exceeding the limit •  Current solutions:

•  Cash rewards for not driving •  Reserved parking spaces for

carpoolers •  Discount transit passes •  etc.

Load

De

lay

0% 100%

Miami, Florida Tokyo, Japan

Media coverage

Related work 1. “An Incentive Mechanism for Decongesting the Roads: A Pilot Program in Bangalore”, D. Merugu, B. Prabhakar, N. S. Rama, NetEcon, ACM

Workshop on the Economics of Networked Systems, July 2009.

2. “Steptacular: an incentive mechanism for promoting wellness”, N. Gomes, D. Merugu, G. O'Brien, C. Mandayam, J. Yue, B. Atikoglu, A. Albert,

N. Fukumoto, H. Liu, B. Prabhakar, D. Wischik, NetHealth, Comsnets Workshop on Networked Healthcare Technology, January 2012.

1.  Texas Transportation Institute 2.  U.S. Energy Information Administration

Stanford Center for Societal Networks scsn.stanford.edu

Inbound

7-8AM 8-9AM 9-10AM

Outbound

4-5PM 5-6PM 6-7PM

Results

CAPRI: stanfordcapri.org

Goal: Incentivize off-peak and walking / biking mode commutes

Amazon EC2

User

Ba

cken

d C

apri

port

al

MySQL Database

Nginx web server Django

framework HTML5 game SQS data pipeline

Recent trips

Spin Game Redeem

Friends Magic Boxes

Latest Rewards

Learn More

Rewards Cash

Rewards Trip

Geolocation trace

RFID scan

3000

3200

3400

3600

3800

4000

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Baseline: 3446 vehicles

Increase Trigger: 3591 vehicles

Credits applied

Exceeded trigger by 144 vehicles!

Data: Stanford University General Use Permit Annual Report No. 12

Auto commutes: RFID Walking / biking commutes: app

Off-peak commutes earn 10 points each.

Commutes are rewarded by duration.

Personalization and “Trendjacking”

Statistics (as of Jan 28, 2014)

Female 64%

Male 36%

Gender

<25 6%

25-34 38%

35-44 24%

45-54 18%

55-64 12%

>65 2%

Age

Staff 72%

Student 15%

Faculty 8%

Other 5%

Affiliation Bronze 66%

Silver 15%

Gold 11%

Platinum 8%

Status

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

4500

3/2/2012 6/2/2012 9/2/2012 12/3/2012 3/5/2013 6/5/2013 9/5/2013 12/6/2013

Num

ber

of u

sers

Capri launch

Apr 2, 2012

Rose Bowl Challenge

Users who invited their friends were entered into a drawing to

win rose bowl tickets

My Beats launch

May 14, 2013

Invite-a-friend Magic Box

Stanford Outbound Commute Count

Capri Registrations

Capri launch Apr 2, 2012

Number of participants

4534 signed up 3837 active

Number of trips 573,099 RFID scans 54,960 app trips

Total rewards given $143,288

•  Each week, select some users to receive magic boxes

•  based on current commute behavior, propensity to shift, etc.

•  E.g.: earn 10 bonus points for each eligible trip!

•  E.g.: Complete survey for 200 points!

•  Use popular events around Stanford to promote Capri •  The Big Game •  Rose Bowl Game •  Other events

•  Increased enrollment and participation

0

200

400

7/27 8/3 8/10 8/17 8/24

0

20

40

Decongesting trips per day (July – August 2013)

Users with offer

Users without offer

RFID Commute Density

App-based Trip Bonus Magic Box

Friend Invitation Magic Box

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

5/27 6/3 6/10 6/17 6/24 7/1 7/8 7/15 7/22

Registrations per day (May – July 2013)

P&TS newsletter features Capri

Friend invitation magic boxes

There are users who carefully avoid the peak hour; these users have high “status”.

We surveyed users about behavior shift.

Users who said they “did not shift” were already off-peak prior to joining Capri.

Users who said they “shifted”, shifted the minimum amount to receive incentives.

Staff shift earlier; students shift later.

Capri users commute less during peak hours compared to the general Stanford population.

Magic box boosted registrations by 94% over previous week.

Users with offer increased performance by 61% over previous week.

Conclusions Capri aims to mitigate the traffic congestion problem in Stanford, especially during peak hours.

With incentives through games, personalized offers and trendjacking, we observe behavior shifts

in users’ commutes: more commutes during off-peak hours and walking / biking commutes.