MaaS – Seamless and on-demand

The  webinar held recently  on Mobility as a Service – Integrating Various Modes of Transport into a Seamless, On-Demand Service – addressed the  challenges and opportunities of implementation of MaaS in different regions. Put together by ITS India jointly with Trafficinfratech, the experts Stacy Ryan, Policy and Strategy – ITS Australia, Anil Chikkara, Ex-Transport Commissioner – Delhi and Akhilesh Srivastava, President – ITS India, looked at how public transport could be  made more commuter friendly with the help of technology and improved Infrastructure.

Parking is a real problem, a difficult one to solve. I wish if there was some sort of magical trick that you could have for cars just to sink and go underground. A huge number of valuable resources and real estate are locked into car spaces. Housing, community development, dedicated cycleways and bus lanes could be available if we didn’t have cars parked everywhere. 

– Stacey Ryan

 

With over 400 million travellers using bus services every year, which is almost three times the railways and four times air services, India has the maximum scope for development of infrastructure for bus mobility.  After independence, buses were purchased by the road transport corporations but post 2022, private operators have shown greater potential and buying power to procure and manage fleets successfully. However, there is no regulation in place to support them to move to the next level of operations by the establishment of bus depots, terminals and other amenities. The sector remains unorganized, unlike the highways, metros and railways.

While there are buses and people willing to use them, what is lacking is good, overall commuter experience. This problem can be solved with the help of technology which can improve communication, signages and provide user-friendly apps. The UPI payment platform created by the government has revolutionized the financial sector. Similarly, technology can aid in ticket booking, communicating bus arrival and departure times and recommending routes.

The number of cars per 1000 people in India is at a very low level as of now but even then, we are finding serious parking issues especially in urban areas. With the Indian economy growing, the number of vehicles is sure to multiply so we have created a parking committee to advise the government about neighborhood and parking policies and dynamic pricing which can help resolve, or, if possible, restrict the purchase of new vehicles.

– Akhilesh Srivastava

 

MaaS represents a transformational approach to urban transport. It gives a 360-degree view about mobility integrating various means of transport including public transit ride, sharing, cycling, car and rental all under a single platform and payment system. Booking and payment for the Metro, private taxis or even a bicycle hire or rickshaw can be done from a single app. Correctly disseminated information will also help reduce traffic congestion when commuters can make informed choices on routes to be taken to avoid road blocks.

There are already a number of systems available without having to build additional digital infrastructure that can solve our urban mobility problem, but they will have to be integrated and this can be done using the MARS cloud services platform. However, India still has to work on a robust, uniform, national digital architecture which serves as a plug and play module where interoperability is possible across geographies, equipment, vendors, service providers and the government. Discussions are already on in standing committees populated with experts from institutions like the IITs and government policy makers, who are working to achieve the objective of a robust digital infrastructure that is scalable. A public, private partnership (PPP) model has been suggested to ensure funding for the digital project. Increase in mobility in a particular area will have a spillover effect with increase in land cost, registration charges, commercial activities and tax collection, thus creating additional revenue which can be shared by the government and the third party. This will also ensure that mobility becomes affordable to the commuter. Staff skilling through training and the issues with urban parking will also be addressed.

The government is deliberating over the regulations so that a last mile hub and spoke connectivity can be put in place to ensure seamless multimodal transport for end users. Regulations also need to address the additional challenge of bus parking.

–   Anil Chikkara

 

 

 

Australia faces different challenges in implementing MaaS. Vehicle ownership is a tradition and people love their cars and massively underestimate how much their vehicle costs them. A survey showed there were two cohorts of people that were particularly accepting of the idea of MaaS, those with mobility challenges and those that rode motorbikes, the latter already being price-sensitive to transport. The wealthy private sector can deliver such a model, but transport needs to be providing services for everyone including the regional, remote, people using wheelchairs or having mobility challenges, the old and the young and therefore the need for government involvement.

Buses are more agile modes of transport service. Metros, light and heavy rail are expensive to build, take a long time, use up a lot of land and are fixed and rigid. They are not necessarily adaptive to population growth. Extreme weather events and other challenges from road and rail networks are causing huge amounts of damage that cause disruption. Therefore, buses and active transport and micro mobility are the ways that can fill the transport needs and deliver services to people where they are and where they need to be.

However, people dislike buses and there is a sociological challenge of getting people to understand that transport can improve their lives without being locked into a private vehicle or a rail. Seamless, real-time transport information that can be visible outside the front door in the form of availability of buses, scooters, e-bikes with a mobile pay plan could get people to trust that the service is going to be where they want to be, where they can be going, and then get them back to where they want to be as well.

There is not much money in transport in Australia as it is heavily subsidised.  The area to work on to improve patronage is getting people to trust the public transport system and ensure the disadvantaged have access to services that suit their time of life from childhood through to adulthood. A lot of work is being done with the community transport sector which is a fertile place for something like MaaS. Succeeding here would make providing services for the rest of the population relatively easier.