In the third part of our series on Mobility as a Service (MaaS) in Europe, we turn our attention towards Madrid, Amsterdam and Vienna. Like elsewhere, with growing populations each city has its own challenges such as congestion, improving air quality and providing a better travel experience for its citizens.
As they work towards creating smart cities with multi-modal, connected transport and shared services, it will require open data, an integrated single system and a reasonable pricing structure, alongside a greater focus on greener solutions to meet environmental targets.
Here, we look at the MaaS efforts of each of these three cities to see what they’ve learned, trialled and adopted in terms of urban mobility.
Missed the first parts of our series? Catch up here and here.
Madrid: slowly shaping its MaaS agenda
With 3.3 million inhabitants, Madrid is the third largest city in Europe after London and Berlin. Driving can be a struggle with heavy traffic, roadworks and city centre parking both limited and expensive. But a different approach to transportation is slowly getting underway.
Madrid City Council’s Air Quality and Climate Change Plan was the catalyst behind the shared mobility app, MaaS Madrid. Launched by The Municipal Transport Company (EMT) of Madrid it combines public transport data and other transport service providers into a single app in a bid to drive both shared mobility and public transport use.
Indeed, sharing appears to be catching on with nearly 1,000 new customers registering daily to use emov. Drive one of its 500 “free-floating” electric Citroën C-Zéro car-sharing vehicles and when you’re finished, simply leave it in a convenient place in Madrid.
Whilst the city has clearly made a start, it still has some way to go compared to other European cities. That said, efforts are at least being made.
Amsterdam: greener, more sustainable mobility
Sustainable urban mobility is vital to keep this thriving, heavily populated city moving yet environmentally sound. By 2025, Amsterdam wants its public transport to be 100% powered by renewable energy.
This impressive target is being helped by its citizens. Around 32% of people travel by bike with 63% of them using this mode of transport daily. Electric car ownership has increased and so too has car sharing by a whopping 376%.
In fact, after a successful ridesharing pilot in the city’s Zuidas business district, a report, Citizens in Motion, said people would favour MaaS over their own private vehicle where ridesharing services were readily available and at a good price. The report also highlighted MaaS as being a possible enabler for connected and autonomous vehicles (CAV) with data underpinning the perfect ‘transport mix’.
According to one Amsterdam citizen, “Without human drivers, driverless vehicles are potentially a lot cheaper to operate, for example as a last mile solution. If that means more convenience for the same price, I’m sold.” You don’t get any better vote of confidence than that.
Vienna: prepared and ready for MaaS
Alongside Amsterdam, Vienna has been tipped as one of the top cities ready to deploy MaaS according to a study by research group Juniper. It claims more than 2.3 billion private car journeys in cities will be replaced with multi-modal, on-demand transport services by 2023 – and they’ll save each MaaS transport user up to 90 hours per year.
Vienna clearly has its sights on being at the forefront of this. With the success of the WienMobil app, citizens now have access to door-to-door transport via bus, tram and metro – including e-loading stations, parking garages, taxis, bike or car sharing, and car rentals. As well as real-time data on journeys, personalised plans, booking, and payment, it also provides details on energy and financial savings based on transport choice.
The winner of the European Mobility Week award in 2017, Vienna is certainly looking towards encouraging greener MaaS transport and has introduced e-taxis as an important step to becoming a smarter, cleaner place to travel.
MaaS and greener transport
Multi-modal transport throughout Europe with its ability to make city travel easier – and greener – is beginning to take shape. MaaS and environmentally friendly travel options will increasingly go hand-in-hand. Of course, it’s not without its challenges; there’s still a lot of work to do.
At SkedGo, our MaaS API and white label solutions mean that transport service providers can implement proven MaaS technology and platforms. And as we constantly review mobility trends throughout Europe – and the world – we’ll embed these learnings to help cities revolutionise citizen travel.