By including a broad base of users and integrating the system with other services, mobility pilots can find robustness and become more resilient to challenges.
Nationwide, Sweden
Key barriers in MaaS development and implementation: Lessons learned from testing Corporate MaaS (CMaaS)
Summary Information
Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is a mobility system bringing together public and private transportation providers, either with a subscription or a pay-as-you-go format. Users pay to access the system, and in return have greater access to a wide variety of transportation modes and solutions. It is favored to reduce private vehicle usage by encouraging modal shift among its users.
A recent study by a team of Swedish researchers sought to understand the barriers facing MaaS deployments, including how those barriers were related to and influenced one another. They specifically sought to understand these challenges as relating to Corporate Mobility as a Service (CMaaS), in which a MaaS system is provided by a company to its employees.
The specific CMaaS system examined in the paper was deployed by a company with approximately 15,000 employees. The services offered included internal taxis, shuttle buses, and e-bikes, as well as commuter buses for travel to and from the city in which the company was located. To assess user reactions, three-wave surveys were conducted: the first wave before the launch, the next 6 months after launch, and the third 12 months after launch.
BEST PRACTICES
Researchers identified a number of system development and implementation barriers, many of which overlapped from different perspectives. These barriers were used to construct lessons learned for potential deployers:
- Review systems' social inclusiveness. The CMaaS system that was examined was targeted at white-collar workers, who were considered to have higher travel needs than others. However, this may be insufficiently inclusive in the long term. In order for CMaaS implementations to be successful in the long term, competencies must be developed and expanded.
- Integrate the systems with broader populations. The deployment faced challenges as conflicting workplace norms prevented the CMaaS system from being integrated with the public transport system, when it should ideally address all work-related travel needs.
- Identify barriers interdisciplinarily and systematically. Capturing the relationship between barriers allows for more comprehensive reflection and adaptation, as well as identifying when barriers are symptoms of larger underlying issues.
