Leveraging App Technology to Measure the Impact of Transportation Disadvantage: The Development of MyAmble

Abstract Widely used data-collection methods fail to fully capture the lived experiences and un-met travel demands of marginalized populations and those at disproportionate risk of experiencing transportation disadvantage (TD). This study describes an interdisciplinary collaboration between social work, civil engineering, and computer science on the development of a transportation data collection tool, MyAmble. The theoretical framework of social exclusion was used as part of the study design in order to better understand the process of marginalization as a result of inability to participate in wider society, in part through lack of transportation. Thus, MyAmble augments the best practices in transportation daily diary research using features designed to characterize and quantify latent travel demand among individuals experiencing TD, as well as the subjective impact of lack of transportation on quality of life and well-being. MyAmble includes several innovations – a daily digital trip planning that captures latent demand, a text-messaging based qualitative interview tool, a self-guided travel history survey, and a challenge logger. We describe the design process and implementation that occurred during a five-day pilot test and present a case study. Finally, findings from the case study suggest that MyAmble was able to successfully capture planned, unplanned, and unserved trips as well as the lived experiences of TD.