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MIT awarded grant to create an energy-saving travel information and incentives system

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PHOTO: A new travel information system developed at MIT and the University of Massachusetts will use rewards to influence travel choices.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) announced that MIT researchers, along with colleagues from the University of Massachusetts, received a $4 million grant to design and test an innovative system that provides incentives for people to make energy conscious travel decisions. CEE Professor Moshe Ben-Akiva will co-lead the project. “We are excited to test if a rewards strategy works with a new real-time, data-driven project designed to curb energy use,” said Ben-Akiva. “The system would be able to scale easily and quickly to more locations, further multiplying its impact.” The grant will develop a method that uses real and simulated personal travel data to reward people to shift their routes, departure times, modes of travel, and vehicles based on live information. For the article, please see here.