The City and County of Denver is offering a new program from Xerox to help residents and tourists make transportation choices more easily. The Go Denver app provides options for “sooner” “cheaper” and “greener” transportation options.
The platform, which includes the Go Denver app, also will provide data-driven insights into how Denver’s transportation infrastructure can be improved as the population continues to swell.
People 20 to 35 years old are moving to cities, where they now represent more than half the urban workforce. This generation thinks differently about transportation, prompting places like the City and County of Denver to re-think how people get from point A to point B.
The app takes an individual’s destination and desired arrival time, and calculates the different routes available, categorized by “sooner,” “cheaper,” and “greener.” It aggregates and calculates the time, cost, carbon footprint, and health benefits from walking, biking, driving, parking, taking public transit, as well as the emerging ride-hailing transportation options – such as Lyft, Zipcar, Car2Go, and FlitWays – giving users a variety of ways to reach their destination, taking into account real-time traffic conditions.
The app eventually will recommend and highlight personalized commuting options as it learns more about its user’s individual travel preferences. Users can also save trips they take often in the “My Rides” section of the app.
Useful Data for City Planners
Destination and preferred travel mode data is important information for a growing city to have so that they can plan where to build new transportation infrastructure such as bus or rail stops.
The next version of the app will integrate bookings and payments so that users can plan their entire trip with a single click of a button. Xerox also is working with its partners to include ridesharing so that users can carpool with people who are traveling in the same direction, as well as destination parking information. Users will eventually be able to create a profile where they can set goals related to their personal fitness, financials and time, and track them within the app.
The Go Denver app is now available for iOS and Android systems in the Apple and Google Play stores as well as at www.GoDenverApp.com and www.pocketgov.com/godenver.