Understanding Mobility as a Service: A Literature Review

Abstract

Urbanization is a rapidly growing process for cities and it naturally increases the supply/demand ratio of citizens or businesses. Thus, managing the transportation component of urbanization becoming more complex and enhancing or shifting the current infrastructure does not contribute to the solution. With the development of new technologies and alteration of user behaviors, mobility solutions should also adapt to satisfy the needs. “Mobility as a Service (MaaS)” is an innovative accessibility-based concept that combines multi-modal transportation enabling the user to choose and manage their trips in a single mobile app or web interface. The concept is based on spatial analyses -mainly network analyses-, digitalization, and management of discrete mobility systems. It offers a manageable and sustainable mobility service by maximizing the benefits of the current infrastructure. MaaS ecosystem builds relations between users and different stakeholders such as public or private transport suppliers and municipal governments in a single platform and it offers personalization and customization for both sides. In this paper, MaaS is examined on the conceptual level based on the literature and existing implementations.