  Over the last decade, the rise of the mobile internet and the usage of mobile
devices has enabled ubiquitous traffic information. With the increased adoption
of specific smartphone applications, the number of users of routing
applications has become large enough to disrupt traffic flow patterns in a
significant manner. Similarly, but at a slightly slower pace, novel services
for freight transportation and city logistics improve the efficiency of goods
transportation and change the use of road infrastructure. The present article
provides a general four-layer framework for modeling these new trends. The main
motivation behind the development is to provide a unifying formal system
description that can at the same time encompass system physics (flow and motion
of vehicles) as well as coordination strategies under various information and
cooperation structures. To showcase the framework, we apply it to the specific
challenge of modeling and analyzing the integration of routing applications in
today's transportation systems. In this framework, at the lowest layer (flow
dynamics) we distinguish app users from non-app users. A distributed parameter
model based on a non-local partial differential equation is introduced and
analyzed. The second layer incorporates connected services (e.g., routing) and
other applications used to optimize the local performance of the system. As
inputs to those applications, we propose a third layer introducing the
incentive design and global objectives, which are typically varying over the
day depending on road and weather conditions, external events etc. The
high-level planning is handled on the fourth layer taking social long-term
objectives into account.
