Setting The Standard For MaaS

I’ve been shouting from the rooftops about Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) for quite a long time now. Last week, I had the opportunity to speak about MaaS—what we’ve accomplished, what still needs to be done, and who is leading the way—at Meeting of the Minds’ Annual Summit in Sacramento. I love the ethos of Meeting of the Minds: they always bring together innovative thinkers to advance the conversation around urban sustainability and technology.

In my talk, I highlighted some of the cities that have made great strides towards making MaaS a reality, in addition to emphasizing why public officials need to take charge in setting the strategy for their region.

Here are some of the MaaS markets who are leading the way: 

1. San Francisco Bay Area

Practical MaaS solutions will require regional governments to unite public services with private companies under an integrated single transportation system - for example, allowing passengers to combine a public rail journey with a bike-sharing app to cover the last mile to their office. In the San Francisco Bay Area, travelers are already able to use a tremendous number (over 20) of public transportation services through the city’s Clipper Card payment system and are also able to use the Clipper Card for both bike sharing and select parking facilities.

To deliver a true MaaS solution, we will need to see the integration of all services (public and private) into the Clipper system, as well as multi-modal real-time information and journeys reflecting the many details of San Francisco’s multifaceted transportation ecosystem. With the new Clipper 2.0 contract and system upgrade, this is exactly what the region has started to do with an API-centric approach to integrate other private mobility companies into their broader MaaS strategy.

2. Chicago

The key tool in reaching a regional MaaS solution is a single payment account and an integrated mobile app that can be used to cover every leg of a journey from start to finish. Chicago’s Ventra payment system offers a world-class success story of the widespread benefits of a single payment account in the transit domain. With Ventra serving as the central mobility platform for Chicago, residents are able to both manage their payments and find real-time information in a single convenient location.

While Ventra is already an incredible tool for Chicago travelers, the next step is to launch the next generation of the mobile app and to integrate additional mobility services beyond transit to ensure that a journey can be paid for from beginning to end in the greater Chicago area regardless of which modes are used. The City of Chicago has launched a mobility task force to take on these big questions - MaaS is in their future.

3. Brisbane

Halfway around the world, Brisbane offers one of the most exciting examples of how inspired leadership can make a difference in transportation progress. From the beginning, Brisbane’s local government has made the effort to study the newest trends in MaaS policy and technology, with this effort resulting in a dynamic roadmap to achieving MaaS for the region.

In a concrete step towards their end goal, and similar to progress in the Bay Area, Brisbane is taking an API-centric approach to their Next-Generation Ticketing System and will also introduce a single mobility app that facilitates multi-modal payments, journey planning and real-time travel information - an invaluable resource for travelers. With dedicated and thoughtful leadership, I’m confident that Brisbane is on the path to MaaS.

4. Los Angeles

In Los Angeles, the TAP Card system already integrates over twenty public transit operators through a common payment system. Working in partnership with LA Metro, we will soon implement a suite of APIs and a mobile app which will integrate payment for other modes (scooter-share, ride-share, bike-share, parking) with a truly multi-modal trip planner, allowing travelers to plan their trips across all combinations of mobility services.

Under the umbrella of our NextCity strategy, we’ve always talked about MaaS being built and enabled on three platforms that we believe regional governments should take the lead in introducing:

• One Account: a single payment system across all forms of mobility
• Integrated Customer Experience: a single interface (mostly based on a mobile app for the foreseeable future) to perform multi-modal journey planning and to receive predictive and personalized journey information
• Integrated Operations and Analytics: an integrated multi-modal transportation management platform that enables incident response, real-time network management and transportation planning

As you can see, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Brisbane are examples of our customers that are taking the lead in introducing the first two of these. Whilst I didn’t feature it in my MOTM presentation, Sydney is also taking the lead in introducing the third with their Intelligent Congestion Management Program.

I’m excited to be working with government agencies around the world to make MaaS a reality.

I’m just one person preaching about MaaS from the Southwest corner of the U.S.A (and often from planes and hotels around the world!), but on my travels I’m able to meet a lot of big thinkers and doers who are working to make MaaS a reality.

In this massive transformation, we’re doing our part: pushing the limits on conversations, ideas and policies.

What is your city doing to make MaaS happen?