Europe leads and North America lags, even as smart city initiatives anchored in public–private partnerships drive growth opportunities for MaaS operators.
The concept of Mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) – a platform that integrates diverse transport modes and transport options from different providers onto a single smartphone app with services that span route planning to payments – is evolving rapidly. Market growth is set to be dynamic as work patterns and consumer mobility preferences change, especially post the covid pandemic, and cities look to build integrated, efficient, flexible, and sustainable mobility networks. Frost & Sullivan’s research highlights that the MaaS market in Europe and North America is set to be close to $20 billion by 2030.
To learn more, please access our research report, European and North American Mobility-as-a-Service Growth Opportunities, Growth Opportunities in the Evolving Public Transport Landscape, 2030, and Evolution of Shared Mobility Infrastructure in Top 20 Smart Cities, or contact sathyanarayanak@frost.com for information on a private briefing.
MaaS to Address Existing Challenges in Urban Mobility
Today, there is growing consensus that the future of urban mobility lies in integrated multimodal solutions. MaaS providers are ideally positioned as mobility service providers (MSPs) as city authorities push to overcome operational inefficiencies as well as congestion and pollution challenges associated with existing urban transport networks.
Technology-enabled MaaS has the potential to optimize unwieldy mobility networks. Over time, the mainstreaming of connected vehicles, AI, and 5G mobile networks will generate further momentum for adoption of scalable MaaS technologies. Growth impetus for MaaS will come from smart city initiatives anchored in public–private partnerships. Simultaneously, shared stakeholder goals—whether governments or private service providers, institutions or individuals, MSPs or city authorities, technology providers or automakers— in terms of streamlining transport management across the urban mobility value chain will boost uptake of MaaS.
Challenges Ahead
The sustained success of MaaS deployment will depend on robust policy and regulatory support, reinforced by strong legal frameworks. Stakeholders will also need to promote interoperability, agree on data sharing protocols, and establish clear data management frameworks.
This will be challenging in a complex, sprawling ecosystem with multiple participants. This includes providers of white label apps, mobility marketplaces, customer MaaS apps, smart ticketing, journey planning/mapping, and smart payments. Add to this, providers of varied transport modes such as shared car (e.g., car and ride sharing), shared micromobility (e.g., bike and moped sharing), vehicle hailing (e.g., ride hailing), demand responsive transit, and active modes (e.g., walking and cycling). Meanwhile, both revenue and business models such as business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-government (B2G), and business-to-business (B2B) are still developing even as use cases are set to span leisure (shopping & retail) to commuting and employee travel.
Europe in the Vanguard of MaaS Deployment
At present, public transport authorities and cities in Europe have been in the vanguard of transitioning MaaS pilots into full-scale deployments. In contrast, North America has virtually no full-scale MaaS implementations, with private cars still very much the fulcrum of urban transport.
The success of MaaS in Europe has to do with multiple factors. To begin with, sustainability imperatives have led to more city and public transport operators proactively pursuing MaaS solutions. Secondly, this has been backed by strong regulatory support. For instance, the Multimodal Digital Mobility Services (MDMS) regulation, which is currently under discussion, aims to enhance the convenience of using multiple modes of transport within the EU. Another example is the UK Department for Transport’s advisory code to guide the rollout of MaaS solutions. And, lastly, an environment conducive to public and private collaborations has been, and will continue to be, a key enabler of market growth.
In North America, fragmented public transit networks and a general lack of political intent have resulted in a more subdued pace of MaaS adoption. This has been aggravated by the fact that at the individual level, the car still remains the most widely used and preferred form of transport in cities and suburbs.
While technology providers do offer trip planning apps, this has not yet transformed into complete multimodal app usage. Many customers still favor apps linked to their local transit authority. Accordingly, in the absence of concerted efforts from cities, clearer specifications related to data usage/sharing, strong regulatory frameworks and more collaborative initiatives, market growth will be tepid. Against this backdrop, more widespread integration between MSPs, public transport operators, and popular ride-hailing operators such as Uber and Lyft will incline customers more positively towards MaaS.
Changing Mobility Patterns, Collaborative Approaches to Accelerate MaaS Adoption
Key competitive factors in the market include cost, technology, reliability, and contractor & customer relationships.
Hybrid working models, sustainability imperatives and changing customer expectations are transforming mobility and commuting practices while creating fertile ground for MaaS adoption. Against this backdrop, MaaS operators are uniquely positioned to promote flexible, efficient, and streamlined multimodal transport.
Public-private partnerships, as exemplified by the MaaS alliance in Europe, will be the bedrock of a successful transition to MaaS. Collaborative approaches will facilitate the rapid development and adoption of smart and sustainable city mobility ecosystems.
With inputs from Amrita Shetty, Senior Manager, Communications & Content – Mobility
