In 1807, a group of enterprising Welsh folks paid the British Parliament \u00a320 for the right to run the world\u2019s first fee-based horse-drawn public tram line \u2014 the Swansea and Mumbles Railway.<\/p>\n
In the 2020s, a twenty won\u2019t be enough to fund a new route. But it can take you on a several-hour e-scooter ride, to a nice coastal town by commuter train, or home in a cab after a long night around town.<\/p>\n
We have no lack of digital mobility services<\/a>. Still, our daily journeys can sometimes feel as cumbersome as traveling by horse-drawn carriage.<\/p>\n Suppose you miss an update about construction on your regular line. Then you struggle to buy the correct fare for the replacement bus. It leaves without you. Uber asks for a surcharge because they can. Then you nearly get run over by a whizzing e-scooter as you decide to walk to your destination.<\/p>\n A day like that makes anyone wonder: Where is all the glorified MaaS (mobility as a service) technology? And why is no one getting a finer grip on multimodal urban transportation<\/a> planning? Perhaps I should get into this line of business?<\/p>\n The good news is that the role of MaaS orchestrator is vacant in most markets. The bad news is that if you decide to fill it, you\u2019ll be in for a bumpy ride.<\/p>\n MaaS stands for mobility as a service \u2014 a multimodal transportation solution offering on-demand access to different transportation services via a single interface.<\/p>\n Essentially, a MaaS operator is an aggregator offering \u00e0 la carte or packaged access to different transportation options: public transportation, ridesharing, bikesharing, carsharing, or any combination of these to navigate the urban jungle.<\/p>\n A customer-delighting urban mobility as a service app also takes away the guessing game of figuring out the correct fare or purchasing multiple passes (which is especially frustrating for visitors), handles payments, and builds effective navigation in tune with a city\u2019s transportation planning priorities.<\/p>\n In short, most MaaS apps include:<\/p>\n Sounds simple. And in theory, it is. But in practice, performing multimodal transportation planning is harder than solving a one-color puzzle.<\/p>\n First, transportation ecosystems have many players \u2014 government agencies, public transportation authorities, carsharing companies, ride-hailers, micro-mobility providers, etc. Some days they are a source of joy. Other days they are the reason for your grievances.<\/p>\n For long enough, transportation market players have pursued the same and competing priorities. Private and public transportation providers operate in silos. Government agencies lack the vision and technological maturity to evolve at the same pace as private players.<\/p>\n Due to that, we now have many examples of not-so-great mobility as a service experiences:<\/p>\n Most markets lack a MaaS orchestrator\/integrator. But it can be a very lucrative position to assume<\/p>\n Urban mobility software development<\/p>\n Everyone wants to become a \u201cplatform\u201d business<\/a>.<\/p>\n Operating a platform lets you tap into economies of scale and progressively generate value from both owned assets (product\/services) and borrowed assets (open APIs, marketplaces, aggregation services).<\/p>\n Platformization is what many urban mobility companies pursue. Think Uber, Bolt, or automotive companies venturing into connected car sharing<\/a>.<\/p>\n But if you are to take on the cross-market MaaS orchestrator role or provide such technology to other private and public entities, you\u2019ll have to go one layer of abstraction higher and think at the ecosystem level.<\/p>\nWhat is MaaS and what is it not?<\/h2>\n
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Why mobility as a service companies should think at the ecosystem level<\/h3>\n
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