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Podcast: The Future of Everything
Episode: Balaji Prabhakar: Can digital incentives help alleviate traffic?
Description: While well-known mapping apps have transformed the daily commute through better information, Stanford electrical engineer Balaji Prabhakar is exploring ways to digitally incentivize people to improve their driving habits.
He calls it “nudging,” and says that small shifts in commute times — just 20 minutes earlier or later — can make a considerable impact on the day’s congestion in highly trafficked urban areas, like San Francisco.
A few years ago, Prabhakar made headlines with a Stanford-only study that used small monetary incentives backed by larger lottery-like rewards to reduce peak-hour commuting on campus. He later undertook a similar bu...