Mode-agnostic mobility contracts: identifying broker/aggregator models for delivering mobility as a service (MaaS)

Abstract

Mobility as a service (MaaS) promises a bold new future where bundled public transport and shared mobility options will provide consumers with seamless mobility on par with and exceeding that of private vehicle ownership. Whilst there is a growing body of work examining the market and end user demand for MaaS, there remains a limited understanding of the supply-side around new business models for delivering these integrated mobility services. Mobility broker/aggregator models have been proposed, but to date there exists no quantitative evidence to empirically test the conditions around which interested businesses might invest or supply in this new entrepreneurial model. In this paper, we propose the idea of mode-agnostic mobility contracts as the interface for bringing together specialised businesses as part of the new MaaS ecosystem. We identify the relevant attributes and attribute levels defining these contracts through an extensive interview and participatory research program with key stakeholders including MaaS operators, conventional transport operators, public transport authorities and consultancies, with a focus in the Nordic countries where such schemes are presently well advanced. These mobility contracts were then incorporated as part of a stated choice survey, and we document the face-to-face pilot used to finesse the survey instrument prior to the main survey. A preliminary mixed logit choice model based on collected data (n=202) is presented to showcase the potential of our stated preference survey to reveal what the market is willing to deliver in terms of MaaS and how the future service delivery ecosystem might look.