Workshop 5 report: New service models – Governing emerging mobility services

Abstract

The rise of new service models for passenger transport is arguably transforming the mobility landscape. Concurrently, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted mobility practices and questioned traditional public transport models. Given the negative externalities of transport, and the key role of shared mobility in reducing these, it is therefore critical to work out what governments can do to ensure that the new service models contribute to making mobility service systems more attractive to users as well as more energy-, space- and cost-efficient. Workshop 5 of the 17th International Conference on Competition and Ownership in Land Passenger Transport set out to address these issues. It included thirteen papers that reported evidence about demand-responsive transport (DRT), ridesourcing, ridesharing, and Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) as well as about innovations within traditional public transport, taxi, and paratransit. The workshop discussed what roles governments have adopted, what types of regulations and policies they have been using, and what is known about the impacts of these governance approaches. Drawing on this discussion, the workshop developed a set of policy recommendations designed to cater for democratic governance processes with transformative impacts as well as a list of potential avenues for further research on the governance of emerging mobility services.