MTI App that Rewards Smart Commuting Featured in Washington Post, City Lab

Commuters in the D.C.-Baltimore region have a new weapon in the fight against gridlock. Available in the Apple and Android app stores, incenTrip rewards users for decisions that reduce traffic for everyone. Developed by experts from the Maryland Transportation Institute (MTI), the cutting-edge app was developed with a $4.5 million grant from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy TRANSNET Program

MTI Director and Herbert Rabin Distinguished Professor Lei Zhang created the app with Chenfeng Xiong and Ya Ji to cut congestion and energy use by 10 percent over the next few years.

“We know that we can never build our way out of congestion,” Zhang told Washington Post reporter Lori Aratani for a story published on August 18. “There is no way we can build enough highways. Transit is good but we don’t have enough money to build all we need.”