On the path to mobility as a service: a MaaS-checklist for assessing existing MaaS-like schemes

ABSTRACT

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) scientific literature base is rapidly growing, but an agreement on what it intrinsically means has not been reached, making fruitful conversations related to MaaS difficult. This study analyzes a five-year-old literature based on MaaS (90 peer-reviewed journal articles) and extracts from it, the key or common elements in all MaaS definitions, calling them the ‘MaaS-checklist’: a) app-related functions or features, b) mobility services, and c) mobility packages. Based upon the MaaS-checklist, we then analyze 21 MaaS-like schemes around the world. Our results show that even though there are many schemes claiming to be MaaS, few of them cover the main elements that intrinsically define MaaS. Our findings show that while most schemes cover app-related functions or features, few of them offer mobility packages, which yields that the path to MaaS may not be hindered by technology development but rather by governance issues on MaaS.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobility as a service
• MaaS
• concept
• review
• definition
• MaaS-like schemes
• MaaS pilots

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from El Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MCIU) through Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) and cofounded by the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER, UE) through the Project ‘RTI2018-098402-B-I00’ as well as funding from the same European Regional Development Fund and Comunidad de Madrid through the project (INNJOBMAD-CM (H2019/HUM-5761). Additionally, the study falls within the framework of the UCM-EMT collaboration project called ‘Cátedra Extraordinaria de Movilidad Ciclista’ (Cycling Mobility Lectureship).

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades [RTI2018-098402-B-I00].