Abstract
The rapid growth of smartphones leads to establishing huge number of different applications and software that can be downloaded to personal smart phones for free or low prices in order to provide different kind of services. Many of these applications are for transportation that aim to connect taxi driver and smartphone users who aim to ride or transport from one location to another. These applications help users to find the closest taxi to drive them to their destinations and charge them based on trip time and distance that measured by the application. Taxi applications are a recent phenomenon, which have an impact on public and private transportation. Recently, many smartphone users in Jeddah city, Saudi Arabia changed their transportation mode and started using Taxi applications like working and nonworking people, students, etc. This paper focuses on university students; it aims to study and analyze the impact of these applications on the traditional transportation modes. The paper conducts a survey that scans the situation and describes how do taxi applications influence the university student's decisions of transportation, present and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of taxi applications. The results show that the taxi applications have changed the pattern of students' decisions on choosing their transportation way. Recommendations have been listed to help investors in transportation sector to adapt the new pattern of the customers.