Analysis of MaaS membership attributes: an agent-based approach

Abstract

Mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) provides a bundle of mobility services under one plan subscription, allowing its customers to travel on a seamless multimodal system. It is envisioned that MaaS will foster more sustainable mobility, but its expected impact is still unknown, since no MaaS system has been deployed in practice, if not in few pilots. This study aims to identify potential MaaS members attributes applying an agent-based modelling approach including MaaS as alternative for the agents. In particular, we simulate a MaaS system configuration in the city of Berlin, giving accessibility to a basic MaaS plan characterized by a daily subscription fee payment. We evaluate 5 different ranges of MaaS plan price scenarios. For comparison, we simulate a Pay-as-you-go configuration, considering specific trip-based costs per each mobility service and considering the total cost of car ownership in the daily agents’ score function. Results generally show a general modal shift from walk, bike and car to MaaS services. Expectedly, the number of MaaS customers decreases as the MaaS price rises. Former public transport and free-floating car-sharing users represent the main potential MaaS customers, as they are the users who employ MaaS services for the longest time during the day. Moreover, car trips have been substituted more than 40% by public transport in MaaS scenarios suggesting that MaaS could have an overall positive impact on the environment.