Smart Mobility and its Implications for Road Infrastructure Provision: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Emerging smart mobility concepts suggest solutions for more effective and environmentally friendly transportation. Given their importance in enabling smart mobility, road infrastructure networks have received limited attention. Questions concerning the development of various isolated smart mobility solutions dominate the discourse, including only a few detached and unaligned implications towards road infrastructure provision. As a result, the development, operation, and functionality of road infrastructure networks are remarkably unchanged, and the deployment of smart mobility solutions remains tentative. The objective of this study was to investigate how road infrastructure must adapt to facilitate a smart mobility transition, not for a single solution but as a socio-technical system transition. As no compiled knowledge for this objective exists, a systematic literature review was performed to consolidate and inductively analyse the literature on smart mobility solutions. Based on the results, implications for road infrastructure provision were identified, and as a path forward, a conceptual model for the digital transformation of road infrastructure is presented. By using smart mobility as the antecedent for changes in road infrastructure provision, this paper contributes to an increased understanding of user-driven, industrial transformations and advances the current product/project view on digitalisation in infrastructure provision with broader value implications. The main contributions of this study are concrete pathways for road infrastructure provision that support smart mobility.