Mobility as a Service Has IoT, Mobile, Smart City Implications

It is hard to envision any flexible, multi-mode transportation system supporting on-demand choice that is not based, fundamentally, on use of smartphones and apps. Nor is it hard to envision the role that could be played by smart city systems that contribute parking, congestion, transit schedules and price information, plus all available modes of transportation, right now.

You might argue that public transit and other for-hire transportation systems have been the full extent of Mobility as a Service (MaaS), primarily seen as a way of increasing public transit ridership and reducing traffic on the road. That might not be the case in the future, and that also will raise questions about investments in public transit , as use of public transit is falling in most major U.S. cities. In fact, ridership has been dropping for three years.

“The fundamental problem is that big-box transit--moving people in 60-passenger buses, 450-passenger light-rail trains or 1,500-passenger heavy-rail or commuter-rail trains--no longer works in American cities,” notes Randal O’Toole, Transportation Policy Center at the Independence Institute director.

So some argue that ridesharing and other new forms of transportation are part of the solution. And it goes without saying that such new forms of transportation will likely rely on use of smartphones and open data to enable real-time choosing of how to get from one point to another point, using all available means of transport.

source: U.S. Department of Transportation

In many parts of the United States, however, MaaS competes not with public transit, but with car ownership.  in 2017, consumer vehicles in service had reached a 64 percent penetration of the U.S. population, the highest of any country.

So in many cities and urban areas, users need to be convinced that MaaS is a suitable replacement for private car usage, not public transit.

Urban transport solutions in dense environments are easier to envision. In such cases, ridesharing, ridesourcing, use of bikesharing, other modes of conveyance, public transit and all other forms of on-demand transportation, integrated into a single platform, are conceivable.

Access to shared data platforms would allow users to determine the best route and price across several end-to-end travel services and modes, according to real-time data such as traffic conditions, time of day and demand, for example.

It is not yet clear whether MaaS reduces, increases or essentially simply shifts the total amount of traffic on city roads. Obviously, the hope is that MaaS could reduce traffic and pollution. But it is fair to say nobody yet knows what might happen if a fully-developed MaaS system were put into place.