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Los Angeles has been a test bed for multiple new mobility modes – ride hailing apps like Uber and Lyft grew rapidly on its streets, the ultimately ill-fated Ford Chariot operated there and now bike share and electric scooters have joined the fray.

The city recognised that, without access to ride-hail trip data, it was difficult to understand the new technology’s impact on congestion or on behaviour such as public transport use or bike ridership. And without information it was hard to develop policy. 

In response, the city has has pioneered a data feed specification (the Mobility Data Specification or MDS) that enables it to keep tabs on the fleets of shared scooters that have taken to its streets. Providing data via the MDS is one of the conditions for operators putting their vehicles on public pavements.

Patterns of movement derived from MDS can shape policy decisions around bike lanes, pedestrian zones or increasing social equity. However, the MDS is a real-time feed enabling the city to see out of zone or poorly parked vehicles and alert the mobility companies involved.

Whilst the feed is only used for micromobility – essentially scooters – at present, it has the potential to include all forms of mobility and give the city vastly detailed information about use patterns and the impact of new mobility on its streets.

The pioneering initiative enabling the first Mobility as a Service trials in Helsinki can be found in Finland’s progressive new Transport Code, which sets out to create a regulatory environment which makes open data from transport operators mandatory. 

All transport providers are required to provide access via open APIs to information on timetables, routes, ticket prices as well as real-time location data. The legislation entered into force on 1 July 2018.

With this, the Finnish government set regulatory conditions to boost the implementation of new technology and business concepts. The Act is part of the more comprehensive Transport Code project and represents a step forward in Finland’s vision of providing “Mobility as a Service” and creating a digital future for mobility that relies on the interoperability of data and open interfaces.

This has supported numerous innovations –spearheaded by Finnish startup, MaaS Global, in Helsinki.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is the trade association for the world’s airlines, representing some 290 airlines or 82% of total air traffic. IATA supports many areas of aviation activity and helps to formulate industry policy on critical aviation issues.

‘One order’ is the new standard identification for each passenger journey at the heart of the  New Distribution Capability (NDC). This is a travel industry-supported program launched by IATA to enhance the capability of communications between airlines and travel agents. 

A key outcome will be to replace the multiple and rigid booking, ticketing, delivery and accounting methods with a single Customer Order record, holding all data elements obtained and required for order fulfilment across the air travel cycle. 

Commenting on the conference, Olivier Hours, Head of Industry Distribution Programs Adoption, IATA said: “This event helped to confirm there are strong opportunities for cities to adopt versions of IATA’s One Order and New Distribution Capability (NDC) protocols for intermodal travel and MaaS.”

The OASC (Open & Agile Smart Cities – founded by the Future Cities Catapult among others) has developed a set of three ‘minimal interoperability mechanisms’ which have been formally adopted by 130 cities in 28 countries:

• Context information management API which permits access to real-time context information from different cities.
• Shared data models – Guidelines and catalogue of common data models in different verticals to enable interoperability for applications and systems among different cities
• Marketplace API – this is the OASC ecosystems transaction management MIM – it exposes functionalities such as catalogue management, ordering management, revenue management, Service Level Agreements, license management and is complemented by marketplaces for hardware and service

Companies are calling for new thinking from policy makers and corporate leaders. For example, businesses like Europcar Mobility Group are promoting a completely “open transport system” that will enable MaaS to deliver economic benefits to cities in a sustainable way. 

Jehan de The from Europcar Mobility Group said “a completely open transport system, or “Mobility as a Service” would bring economic benefits to cities in a sustainable way. He said that while progress would be dependent on new thinking from global policymakers and business leaders, technology was not a barrier.”

Europcar Mobility Group is a major player in mobility markets and listed on Euronext Paris. The mission of Europcar Mobility Group is to be the preferred “Mobility Service Company” by offering alternative attractive solutions to vehicle ownership, with a wide range of mobility-related services: vehicle-rental, chauffeur services, car-sharing, scooter-sharing and peer-to-peer car-rental.

Europcar Mobility Group operates through multi brands to meet different requirements – it’s four major brands are: Europcar® – the European leader in vehicle rental services, Goldcar® – the most important low-cost car-rental company in Europe, InterRent® – ‘mid-tier’ brand focused on leisure and Ubeeqo® – one of the European leaders in car-sharing (BtoB, BtoC). 

Europcar Mobility Group delivers its mobility solutions worldwide solutions through an extensive network in 135 countries (including 16 wholly owned subsidiaries in Europe, 2 in Australia and New Zealand, franchises and partners).  

At the Open Mobility Conference in 2019, Sandra Witzel, Head of Marketing at MaaS platform provider Skedgo, provided us an insight into the motivation behind MaaS entrepreneurs: 

“We want a future where consumers have complete information about their travel options and at the same time are free to choose how they access and pay for those journeys. We see this approach as an essential ingredient for a major shift away from private car use and enabling rapid adoption of electric and shared mobility solutions, intermixed with an increase in the levels of walking and cycling around our cities.” 

SkedGo was started in 2009 by three founders with previous successful exits and has offices in Australia, Germany, UK, Finland, Argentina and Vietnam. SkedGo provides personalised trip planning, corporate mobility and other mobility-as-a-service technology for start-ups, corporations and governments. A senior developer team creates tailored solutions leveraging our unique API. The result: organisations can rapidly create their own multi/mixed modal MaaS offering, including parking, book & pay features, events and itineraries as well as complete corporate mobility solutions.

In Amsterdam, for Sanneke Mulderink, founder and owner of Dutch MaaS platform Tranzer there should be a simple rule: “All modes of transport, either financed by the public or private and operating in the public space must be offered on a non-discriminatory basis to MaaS providers”.

Tranzer connects to all different systems of transport operators or suppliers like bike share, car share and taxis from all over the world to get the right price and the right ticket. The tickets are totally integrated in the validation process of the operator and can open a gate. Within the Tranzer platform the customer can plan, book and pay and choose the cheapest, the fastest or most comfortable way of travelling by public transport, taxi, shared car or bike. 

The Tranzer API can be fully integrated with business platforms. Tranzer is already integrated in WeChat which means that Chinese people can travel within Europe using the WeChat app connected to the Tranzer tickets. The Tranzer platform will soon be integrated with booking platforms and banking platforms.