Cities are at the heart of the mobility revolution, revealing their forward-thinking ambitions in adapting themselves to challenging times, like the current pandemic we face. In 2020, ERTICO launched the ambitious City Moonshot initiative aiming to engage with 300 cities worldwide with the main objective of understanding their needs and requirements when it comes to transport and mobility.
The first findings have been presented in an exclusive event, open to ERTICO and MaaS Alliance public authority members. The focus was on sustainability, Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) and data sharing.
In his opening remarks, Jacob Bangsgaard, CEO of ERTICO, praised the ongoing work of the City Moonshot initiative and the important role of cities across the world towards a smart, green and digital transition of the mobility sector. ‘The City Moonshot initiative is very much about understanding the needs and mobility goals of cities, and highlight fruitful collaboration going forward. Public-private partnerships are essential in supporting cities’ ambitions towards smarter and more sustainable mobility’, said Jacob Bangsgaard.
So far, ERTICO has interviewed 80 cities. The early outcome reveals that most of the interviewed cities have a precondition for MaaS and have or are working on the integration of a policy. It was also revealed that city administrations see themselves as the main drivers behind MaaS, even though surveys show that they also think that the implementation approach should be a mix, led by cities, commercial services and the private sector.
The MaaS Alliance, a public-private membership organisation, hosted by ERTICO, is creating the foundations for a common approach to MaaS, unlocking the economies of scale needed for successful implementation and take-up of MaaS in Europe and beyond. It has now published its MaaS Market Playbook, a document that collected some insights and ideas for developing user-centric, societally sound MaaS services.
‘While MaaS can make an individual’s journey easier and smoother, it also works on a systemic level, in cities, by encouraging the desired modal shift and making transport network operations more efficient with fewer vehicles or predictive traffic management services’, says Piia Karjalainen, Secretary General of the MaaS Alliance. The MaaS Market Playbook gathers views and insights from key stakeholder groups and the MaaS ecosystem. Along with identifying expected opportunities and motivational blocks, the playbook suggests frameworks for governance and regulation for MaaS.
The exclusive webinar event welcomed three cities, who shared their knowledge and findings.
Hamburg, Germany was represented by Sascha Westermann from Hamburg Hochbahn to put forward the digital transformation of the city while improving the user experience. To achieve their goals Hamburg is aiming at providing the city and metropolitan areas with mobility services within five minutes and to make the Hochbahn climate-neutral by 2030 with the creation of new subway line U5, a digital S-Bahn and the development of HEAT (Hamburg Electric Autonomous Transportation). Furthermore, in October 2021, Hamburg will be the host of the ITS World Congress and will therefore have the opportunity to showcase their mobility strategy.
Gonzalo Pena Iglesias, director of mobility for City of Buenos Aires, Argentina introduced the improvement made by the city toward MaaS. He highlighted the growing use of public transport in the city – 5,5 million trips per day and the main regulatory and technological challenges faced in the integration of new public and private mode of transportation such as open payments transport law or system enforcing and managing regulations in real-time.
The third city was Tampere, Finland, represented by Teppo Rantanen who described the different layers of the Finnish ecosystem for future mobility, in term of infrastructure and services while enabling governance and regulation. The digital transformation was illustrated by different examples from which the ‘Hervanta Test Area’ for automated traffic, offering companies the opportunity to try out new intelligent transport and automated mobility services in a real environment. The City’s goal is to introduce autonomous buses in stages during 2021.
Overall the event highlighted the progress made around the world to improve and implement in our daily lives Mobility as a Service. The preliminary results as well as the implementation into cities presented during the event are promising. City Moonshot’s target to interviewing 300 cities will be reached by October 2021 where the results are going to be further analysed and presented during the ITS World Congress on the 11-15 October 2021, in Hamburg.
Are you a city and would like to share your experience? Please contact Lidia Buenavida Peña, ERTICO – ITS Europe.
