Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is a recurrent theme of transport conferences. It’s also a recurrent grumble that “it doesn’t work” and/or “won’t work” and, instead, we should be concentrating on funding more buses, HS2 – in fact finding the money for anything other than MaaS.
To date, at least, this has been the case in the UK.
In global capitals, such as Berlin and Tokyo (pictured) – and occasionally in rural areas, MaaS is seen as a useful tool, enabling local authorities to move people away from car dependence by providing them with simple, viable and multi-modal alternatives.
It’s also a way for private sector mobility providers to lock consumers into their apps, using them for a greater proportion of trips and to the exclusion of their competitors.
