Making Mobility-as-a-Service: Towards Governance Principles and Pathways

Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) is a service concept that integrates public transport with other mobility services, such as car sharing, ride sourcing, and bicycle sharing. The core idea is that intermediary digital services make it easier for users to plan, book, and pay for complementary mobility services, thereby facilitating less car-centric lifestyles. However, although MaaS has gained much interest in recent years, the concept has proven difficult to realize. Accordingly, there is a prevalent demand for knowledge on how to enable and push MaaS developments.Conceptualizing MaaS developments as an innovation process that might contribute to a sustainability transition, this thesis sets out to improve the understanding of how public sector actors can facilitate action in the early phases and steer the innovation trajectory towards addressing long-term sustainability goals. The public transport authority in V\ue4stra G\uf6taland (Sweden), and its attempts to facilitate MaaS developments, is used as a starting point. Three of its MaaS-related activities between 2016 and 2019 are analyzed based on participatory observation and stakeholder interviews. Additionally, the thesis draws on two qualitative studies of MaaS developments situated in Finland and Australia.The thesis’ contribution to the research field of MaaS is threefold. Firstly, it explores expectations of MaaS. A majority of the actors involved in the studied MaaS developments reckoned that MaaS will support a modal shift away from private car use. Still, while some actors were confident that this will lower the negative externalities of personal mobility systems, others feared that it will reinforce social and environmental problems. Of note is that none of these views are yet backed by any extensive empirical evidence, the shortage of which is an ongoing challenge for MaaS developments. Secondly, the thesis identifies institutional factors that shape MaaS developments. The studied developments were enabled by novel information technologies and motivated by the need to lessen the negative impacts of private cars. Yet, the developments brought together actors that had not previously collaborated and challenged models of collaboration, business, and customer relations, which made them contingent on complex modifications within and beyond personal mobility systems. Thirdly, the thesis examines how the public sector governs MaaS developments. The governance approaches varied across Sweden, Finland, and Australia in terms of leading actors, methods of intervention, and underlying motivations, but were yet to deliver much tangible results for citizens in all three countries.Based on these findings, the thesis proposes principles and pathways for MaaS governance. The principles advocate a broad set of activities to address all the institutional factors that impede MaaS developments. In contrast to the observed governance approaches, this includes activities aimed at strengthening mobility services and active mobility, and at weakening the private car regime. The pathways describe four roles public sector actors can take in MaaS developments – MaaS Promoter, MaaS Partner, MaaS Enabler, and Laissez-Faire – and illustrate how the method(s) of intervention can be adjusted between innovation phases. The principles and pathways thereby provide a comprehensive tool for understanding and enhancing public-private dynamics in MaaS developments

Adopting Mobility-as-a-Service: An empirical analysis of end-users\u27 experiences

Despite widespread interest, empirical research on how end-users perceive and use Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) is scarce. To address this knowledge gap, this paper analyzes the end-user process of adopting a MaaS service entitled EC2B, which was launched in Gothenburg (Sweden) in the spring of 2019. The contribution to the MaaS literature is three-fold. Firstly, the paper provides insight into potential user segments by describing the characteristics and motives of the studied pool of adopters. Secondly, it improves the understanding of the potential effects of MaaS by outlining how the EC2B service was used and how it influenced travel behavior. Thirdly, the paper informs strategies for facilitating MaaS adoption by outlining what types of drivers and barriers the end-users faced during different stages of the adoption process. The reported findings underscore previous assertions that MaaS is much more than just an app and a subscription plan and highlight the mutually reinforcing relationship between the introduction of MaaS and the implementation of policies aimed at reducing car use

Public Sector Open Innovation: Exploring Barriers and How Intermediaries Can Mitigate Them

Public organizations are increasingly embracing open innovation (OI) practices. Still, little is known about how the challenges they face when doing so compare to the barriers that have been identified for OI in the private sector. Similarly, despite being recognized as imperative actors in private sector OI, the understanding of open innovation intermediaries’ (OIIs) roles in public sector OI is limited. Given these two knowledge gaps, this licentiate thesis sets out to further the knowledge of what types of barriers impede public sector OI, and how OIIs can mitigate them. These issues are explored through four case studies within the public transport sector in Sweden. In all the cases, public organizations were trying to accelerate innovation through outbound OI practices, and in three of the cases, OIIs were utilized to facilitate the processes. A comparison of the case study findings and extant OI literature suggests that OI practices are harder to adopt for public organizations than for private firms. Public organizations face more rigorous regulations and more extensive bureaucracy, have fewer incentives to take risks, and are influenced by objectives and inner mechanisms that are difficult for external innovators to understand. Further, a cross-comparison of the case studies identifies that OIIs can mitigate the negative impacts of the aforementioned barriers by expanding the boundaries of innovation ecosystems, decreasing costs for distant search and data processing, fostering inter-organizational collaboration, and assisting public organizations in managing the innovation trajectory. Even so, the studied cases also illustrate that the introduction of OIIs can be contested, and that they might have hampering effects as well. Therefore, OIIs need to be carefully designed and launched so that they match the needs of the specific situations

Barriers to innovating with open government data: Exploring experiences across service phases and user types

Open government data (OGD) can enable outbound open innovation (OI) that is beneficial to society. However,\ua0innovation barriers hinder OGD users from generating value. While previous studies have detailed a large number of such\ua0barriers, little is known of how different types of OGD users are affected, and when the barriers appear in their innovation\ua0processes. To this end, this paper describes a case study of distributed service development in the Swedish public transport\ua0sector. The contribution to extant research is twofold. Firstly, based on an inductive analysis, three OGD user archetypes are\ua0proposed: employees, entrepreneurs and hobbyists. Secondly, the study finds that the significance of distinct innovation barriers\ua0varies across phases of the services’ lifecycles and depending on the OGD users’ motivation, objective, pre-conditions and\ua0approach. Drawing on these insights, we propose that OGD initiatives aimed at facilitating outbound OI to a greater extent\ua0should address the barriers that appear during diffusion of innovations, the barriers that are not directly related to the OGD\ua0provision, and the barriers that are experienced by non-obvious OGD user groups

Public–private innovation: barriers in the case of mobility as a service in West Sweden

Departing from open innovation (OI), this case study explores the development of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) in West Sweden. An analysis of 19 interviews reveals how representatives from involved actors perceive internal and external barriers as hampering the regional public transport authority’s attempts to collaborate with private actors, and that the perception of barriers is incongruent across public and private actors. Transferability to other cases of public–private OI is discussed, and implications for public actors are proposed. The paper expands the knowledge of preconditions for MaaS’ development and of the unique conditions for OI in public–private settings

Understanding MaaS: Past, Present and Future

Daily references to the changing landscape in the provision of passenger transport services is made in the transport literature, including grey material. Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is the acronym which appears to have caught the imagination of technology providers with promises of a new era of passenger transport whereby assets need not be owned and services can be bought at the point of need. It is the technological developments which have spearheaded the new understanding of MaaS.MaaS has evolved into a concept that integrates public and private transport services to provide one- stop access through a common interface. MaaS is at the centre of the popular view on future collaborative and connected mobility. For transport policy, MaaS is seen as a way to reduce car traffic, and its negative externalities, by enabling citizens to satisfy their mobility needs without having to own assets such as automobiles, either conventional or (in the future) self-driving. MaaS also opens new choices for non-car owning citizens who previously had limited transport options, making some of them socially excluded. Whilst definitions vary, the concept of MaaS has several dimensions: in the form of a smart app and in real-time, it provides mobility services using multimodal options, through a sophisticated journey planner that provides the user with multiple customised options and offers the opportunity for payment either at the point of use or with a pre-purchased mobility bundle. This single platform is envisaged to eventually be transferable around the world from city to city and region to region and also to remain pervasive to the user by working and monitoring the journey in real-time and providing options for recovery in the case of disruption, and with an aspiration to support public equity objectives.MaaS has also received considerable attention in recent years from decision-makers (for instance, the Finnish government has implemented new transport regulations intended to facilitate MaaS developments) and practitioners (examples of MaaS start-ups include MaaS Global in Finland, EC2B in Sweden and Moovel in Germany) as well as researchers (e.g., Hensher and Mulley (2019) Hensher, 2017; Jittrapirom, 2017; Sochor et al., 2016; Wong et al., 2019; Mulley, 2017). Still, the knowledge of MaaS is nascent, trials for the most part have not been thoroughly evaluated and the evidence for the mobility and societal benefits of MaaS have yet to be confirmed.The paper is structured as follows. The next section provides the literature context that underpins the part of the title of this paper relating to the ‘Past’. This is followed by a section detailing the present in terms of a current MaaS trial in Sydney, New South Wales, designed to provide another ‘data point’ in our current understanding of MaaS. The penultimate section looks to the future and the challenges ahead by identifying some key questions critical to the development of MaaS. The final section concludes

Intermediary MaaS Integrators: A Case Study on Hopes and Fears

At present, many policymakers and practitioners are searching for actions that could facilitate Mobility as a Service (MaaS) developments. A potential action, which has received a lot of attention, is to introduce Intermediary MaaS Integrators; that is intermediate actors that assemble the offerings from Transport Service Providers (TSPs) and distribute these to MaaS Operators. However, little is known about if and how TSPs and MaaS Operators would appreciate the introduction of Intermediary MaaS Integrators. To address this knowledge gap, this paper explores an attempt to establish a national Intermediary MaaS Integrator in Sweden. The contribution to transportation research is twofold. Firstly, the paper advances the conceptual understanding of Intermediary MaaS Integrators by identifying four defining dimensions: Activities, Management, Processes and Context.Secondly, it deepens the knowledge of Intermediary MaaS Integrators’ value propositions by detailing TSPs’ and prospective MaaS Operators’ hopes and fears vis-\ue0-vis them. Lastly, practical implications for how to facilitate acceptance and adoption are proposed. Intermediary MaaS Integrators should only be introduced if basic incentives for using their services are in place, and if introduced, they should preferably: go beyond offering technical services; have clear, declared objectives; be impartial and capable actors; and carefully consider their launch strategies

Institutional conditions for integrated mobility services (IMS): Towards a framework for analysis

The present text is a theoretical framework that has been developed with the aim to generate knowledge of and policy recommendations for the promotion of integrated mobility services (IMS), with specific regard to institutional dimensions. Integrated mobility services are services where the passenger’s transport needs are met by a service that not only integrates a range of mobility services, both public and private, but also provides one-stop access to all services through a common interface. These types of services are currently being developed in several cities globally, and the purpose of the project is to understand and explain how institutions can enable, but also impede, their realization. Institutions are defined as a relatively stable collection of rules and practices, embedded in structures that enable action. In the project a broad theoretical approach, developed by an interdisciplinary research team, will be applied. As such, the framework includes factors at the macro, meso and micro levels, thus including extensive societal trends as well as individual\u27s needs and behaviour. The macro level includes broader social and political factors, including both formal rules and more informal social norms and perceptions. The division between formal and informal variables recur on the meso and micro levels respectively. The meso level – which includes both public and private actors at regional and local levels – consists of both formal institutional factors such as taxation and regulations, and informal factors such as organizational culture and inherited networks between regional actors. Each actor enters the collaborative processes that signify IMS with their own ideals, interests and expectations, and it is in these processes of negotiation that the framework takes it point of departure. It is also in this context that business models will be developed, another central aspect of the realisation of IMS. Finally, the framework also includes the micro level, where an individual perspective is placed at centre stage. Individuals are affected by various formal incentives and push factors, as well as more informal aspects such as self-image and social status. Through the application of the framework in a number of case studies, empirical findings will help illuminate which institutional factors enable or constrain the development of IMS. The findings will provide the empirical and analytical foundation for suggestions on how formal and informal rules and practices can be modified to enable new IMS to contribute to sustainable mobility

Kollektivtrafikmyndigheter och smart mobilitet: Nordiska erfarenheter och perspektiv p\ue5 MaaS och autonoma bussar

Automatisering, elektrifiering, integrerad mobilitet samt plattforms- och delnings- ekonomin diskuteras i allt st\uf6rre omfattning. Smart mobilitet \ue4r en samlingsterm f\uf6r dessa olika fenomen och trender. Smart mobilitet anses kunna bidra till ett mer h\ue5llbart transportsystem, attraktiva st\ue4der och levande landsbygd, men kan ocks\ue5 leda till \uf6kad privatbilism, mer tr\ue4ngsel och en f\uf6rs\ue4mrad stadsmilj\uf6. Forskning visar att en central f\uf6ruts\ue4ttning f\uf6r att smart mobilitet ska kunna bidra till ett mer h\ue5llbart transportsystem \ue4r att andelen kollektivtrafik och delade mobilitetstj\ue4nster \uf6kar. Nya akt\uf6rer har dykt upp p\ue5 transportomr\ue5det och erbjuder olika typer av mobilitetstj\ue4nster. Fr\ue5gan \ue4r hur befintliga kollektivtrafikmyndigheter strategiskt ska positionera sig i detta nya och snabbt f\uf6r\ue4nderliga landskap. Vilken typ av ansvarsf\uf6rdelning och vilken typ av samverkan kommer att kr\ue4vas f\uf6r att uppn\ue5 attraktiva och h\ue5llbara transporter i en framtid pr\ue4glad av smart mobilitet? Det \ue4r bakgrunden till detta forskningsprojekt, som har finansierats av K2.I projektets har vi genomf\uf6rt fallstudier fr\ue5n (fr\ue4mst) nordiska storst\ue4der om det som betecknas kombinerad mobilitet eller Mobility as a Service (MaaS), samt p\ue5g\ue5ende f\uf6rs\uf6k med autonoma bussar. Hanteringen av MaaS har studerats i storstadsregionerna Stockholm, V\ue4stra G\uf6taland, Sk\ue5ne, Oslo, Helsingfors, K\uf6penhamn. Utblickar har \ue4ven gjorts till Birmingham och Amsterdam. N\ue4r det g\ue4ller autonoma bussar har merparten av det empiriska arbetet genomf\uf6rts i Barkarby i J\ue4rf\ue4lla kommun (Region Stockholm). D\ue4rtill har vi \ue4ven genom en workshop inh\ue4mtat erfarenheter fr\ue5n Oslo och Sj\ue4lland (Danmark) samt fr\ue5n ett utredningsarbete i Sj\uf6bo och Tomelilla kommuner (Sk\ue5ne). Vidare har vi studerat uppfattningar om autonoma bussar bland representanter f\uf6r svenska bussf\uf6rare.Analyserna i projektet har lett fram till en tydlig bild av att den offentliga sektorns organisationer spelar en viktig roll i utvecklingen, f\uf6rmedlingen och integreringen av smart mobilitet. I praktiken har vi sett att olika kollektivtrafikmyndigheter har tagit olika roller; medan vissa \ue4r mycket aktiva och engagerade, h\ue5ller sig andra mer avvaktande och f\uf6rsiktiga.Rapportens analyser visar att de nordiska RKM-erna ofta har liknande m\ue5l med att inf\uf6ra MaaS och autonoma bussar, men att de har valt olika ansatser f\uf6r att realisera dessa m\ue5l. I samtliga fall pr\ue4glas arbetet av en \uf6nskan att skapa b\ue4ttre mobilitet och fler m\uf6jligheter f\uf6r medborgarnas resande, samt en ambition att bidra till en s\ue5 kallad ”modal shift” till mer h\ue5llbart resande och d\ue4rmed en h\ue5llbar utveckling.Under den tidsperiod som vi har arbetat med detta projekt har MaaS framst\ue5tt som en ”st\uf6rre” fr\ue5ga och mer uttalat utvecklingsomr\ue5de f\uf6r de nordiska RKM-erna \ue4n autonoma bussar. Men autonoma bussar ing\ue5r ocks\ue5 i deras arbete, och hanteras ibland som en mer eller mindre integrerad del av arbetet med MaaS. Det avs\ue4tts sammantaget stora resurser till arbetet med b\ue5de MaaS och autonoma bussar, men initiativ med MaaS kr\ue4ver, under\ua0f\uf6r \uf6vrigt lika f\uf6rh\ue5llanden, ett st\uf6rre samordningsarbete \ue4n initiativ med autonoma bussar.Introduktion av smart mobilitet \ue4r inte en neutral fr\ue5ga, utan tv\ue4rtom en fr\ue5ga med ett utpr\ue4glat politiskt inneh\ue5ll, eftersom den r\uf6r formandet av framtidens mobilitet, samt makt och f\uf6rdelning av resurser i samh\ue4llet. Regionala kollektivtrafikmyndigheter \ue4r i grunden politiskt styrda organisationer, men vi kan notera att fr\ue5gan om smart mobilitet trots detta inte diskuteras som den politiskt laddade fr\ue5ga den \ue4r. Det finns idag en tendens att reducera den till en fr\ue5ga om renodlad teknikutveckling, och det finns i flera fall en ben\ue4genhet att l\ue4mna \uf6ver viktiga strategiska och principiella v\ue4gval till marknadsakt\uf6rer. Detta \ue4r problematiskt. Vi efterlyser en bredare politisk diskussion om smart mobilitet. Vi menar ocks\ue5 att regionala kollektivtrafikmyndigheter skulle beh\uf6va komplettera sin verksamhet med nya kompetenser. Det \ue4r bland annat n\uf6dv\ue4ndigt f\uf6r samarbetet med nya akt\uf6rer och f\uf6r att kunna st\ue4lla krav p\ue5 nya leverant\uf6rer av mobilitetstj\ue4nster. Det \ue4r viktigt att RKM och andra politiska institutioner tar st\ue4llning till syftet med smart mobilitet som MaaS, autonoma bussar, privata sj\ue4lvk\uf6rande bilar (delade eller ej), elsparkcyklar m.m. Om man inte kan precisera syftet med smart mobilitet \ue4r det kanske inte h\ue4r man ska anv\ue4nda resurser. Bland de nordiska RKM-erna finns m\ue5nga olika strategier f\uf6r hur myndigheterna f\uf6rh\ue5ller sig till MaaS, och det \ue4r f\uf6r n\ue4rvarande inte m\uf6jligt att s\ue4ga vilken strategi som \ue4r den mest f\uf6rnuftiga. En medvetet \ue5terh\ue5llsam strategi kan om n\ue5gra \ue5r visa sig b\ue4ttre \ue4n en mer aktiv strategi. Det motsatta \ue4r dock naturligtvis ocks\ue5 m\uf6jligt