What might Covid-19 mean for mobility as a service (MaaS)?

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Acknowledgments

I thank Corinne Mulley, John Nelson, Glenn Lyons, Daniel Reck, Chinh Ho and David Banister for insightful comments on earlier drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 ‘New’ in the sense that there is a much broader interest in WFH given the forced circumstance. Telecommuting, for example, is not new (see Brewer & Hensher, 1998) but has always struggled to get support from either employees or employers, and especially where the matching of employees and employers is required for it to be implemented. See also https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-do-we-meet-anyway-chance-relieve-burden-meetings-glenn-lyons/.

2 Flattening of the curve is now replaced with the challenge to find ways to maintain flattening of the peak now that Covid-19 has done the hard work for us. ‘The camel has died’ and now we want to preserve ‘the horse’.

3 Some redistribution of tax money will have to happen – providing a good opportunity to highlight road pricing (once again), given also that fuel tax income will decrease with increasing electrification.

4 Which has associated emission reduction benefits.

5 In Australia, it is suggested that the annual cost of congestion in terms of lost productive and leisure time is $30billion (BITRE, 2015).

6 However, with social distancing, office spaces will need to be rearranged and the ‘floor area to worker ratio’ will increase, possibly resulting in no gain.

7 However, there will be the issue of the costs of running an office from home and who might fund that.

8 Examples for public transport including automatic doors to avoid touching entry and exit points both on trains and buses and also platforms, cleaning wash rooms more often (or even closing them) given they are a major source of disease transmission, separating bus drivers by a plastic separator (the two-thirds design used by many bus operators to enable some safe communication with passengers), no cash payments, the wearing of masks, and temperature check on entry to and exit from public transport. Also Apps are being developed such as Skedgo’s occupancy feature and COVID-19 alerts for public transport confidence: https://skedgo.com/skedgo-launches-occupancy-feature-and-covid-19-alerts-for-public-transport-confidence/.

This feature allows passengers to choose quieter routes and carriages, or switch to alternative forms of transport to maintain social distancing, such as cycling or e-scooters. The occupancy feature has been trialled using open source data from Transport for New South Wales in Sydney and can be rolled out worldwide, depending on data availability. For rideshare, the big challenge is how we might ensure that drivers clean the passenger areas every time someone alights and before someone gets on board. Rideshare may be more challenging than public transport in managing the biosecurity risk. It will also be interesting to see how micro-mobility providers ensure disinfection of vehicles. It has also been suggested that buses might be preferred over trains where the latter travel long distances underground in situations perceived as contained. With a bus, one can open the windows which is seen as an advantage regardless of whether it makes a difference to the health risk. Importantly, it will be easier to increase passenger capacity under social distancing through adding more buses into the network than increasing train capacity which is often at its limits given track constraints.

9 Although they are currently not legal in New South Wales.

10 Carpooling historically has faced many difficulties in finding a match (i.e., fellow travellers). With the extra layer of trust required, it may be challenging to achieve this.

11 But we do not want to discourage informal lift-sharing between trusted groups using someone’s car – which is how carpooling started in the first place.

12 I thank Glenn Lyons for his liking of this interpretation, which in his words ‘merits further attention’.

13 Some commentators have suggested that rideshare is part of the hyped 'shared mobility' concept rather than a reality arriving soon.

14 Will taxi drivers, for example, clean the seats and surrounding space every time a passenger gets out? There have been a lot of licences returned recently. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/coronavirus-no-idle-threat-as-cabbies-in-decimated-taxi-industry-return-plates/news-story/5e359d5e047674789d09de2b4bc507c5.

15 Continuing normal service levels has allowed customers to physically distance on trains and platforms.

16 Daniel Reck (Personal communication) in commenting on this says: ‘Interesting idea, one way this could work out is by taking up UbiGo’s idea of selling a number of PT daily passes instead of a monthly ticket to accommodate irregular / part time commutes.’