A Critical Review of New Mobility Services for Urban Transport

Abstract

The growing pressure on urban passenger transport systems has increased the demand for new and innovative solutions to increase its efficiency. One approach to tackle this challenge has been the slow but steady shift towards shared mobility services (car-, bike-sharing etc.). Building on these new modes and the developments in information and communication technologies, the concept of “Mobility as a Service” (MaaS) has recently come to light and offers convenient door-to-door transport without the need to own a private vehicle. The term Mobility as a Service (MaaS) stands for buying mobility services based on consumer needs instead of buying the means of mobility. In recent years, various MaaS schemes have been arisen around the world. The objective of this paper is to review these newly existing mobility services and develop an index to evaluate the level of mobility integration for each based on the assumption that higher level of integration is more appealing to travellers. The review presented in this paper allows a comparison among the schemes and provides the background and the key points of MaaS systems that the research community could use for designing surveys. It also provides significant insights to transport operators and authorities on the elements they should take into account to apply an attractive MaaS scheme that could effectively shift demand away from private vehicles.