IATSSR-00227; No of Pages 3 IATSS Research xxx (2019) xxx
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IATSS Research
Overview
MaaS trends and policy-level initiatives in the EU Koichi Sakai ⁎ Chiba Highway Office, Kanto Reginal Development Bureau, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, 5-27-1, Tendai, Inage-ku, Chiba-shi, Japan
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 27 August 2019 Received in revised form 6 November 2019 Accepted 8 November 2019 Available online xxxx Keywords: MaaS Public transport European Commission Policy
a b s t r a c t The concept of mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) was conceived in Finland, and it is characteristically user-oriented. Interest in MaaS has quickly spread across Europe along with the rapid advances in information and communications technology and the internet of things in recent years, as the realization of MaaS is consistent with the policy directions of the EU member states promoting the use of public transport. This paper describes the MaaS concept in EU, the birth of the concept in Finland and its background, and EU-wide policy level initiatives and their characteristics. © 2019 International Association of Traffic and Safety Sciences. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
1. Introduction
2. MaaS in the EU
The concept of mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) was conceived in Finland, EU, and it is characteristically user-oriented. Its realization is consistent with the policy directions of EU member states promoting the use of public transport instead of private cars as a countermeasure to global warming in the transport sector. Accordingly, interest in MaaS has quickly spread across Europe along with the rapid advances in information and communications technology (ICT) and the internet of things (IoT) in recent years. The birth of the MaaS concept in Finland is closely related to the industrial structure in Finland. A reason behind this rapid advance of MaaS in Europe is also that the European Commission has continually promoted multi-modal journey planner across the EU for more than a decade. This paper describes the MaaS concept in the EU, the birth of the concept in Finland and its background, and EU-wide policy level initiatives and their characteristics.
2.1. Definition of MaaS
⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address:
[email protected]. Peer review under responsibility of International Association of Traffic and Safety Sciences.
There are various definitions of MaaS. However, the most appropriate one from a user-oriented focus is that it is a “digital platform with integrated services, including journey planning involving all modes of transport, booking, e-ticketing, and payment, from the starting location up to the destination.” [1]. MaaS can be considered as all the modes of transport other than private cars. In this realm, it includes the existing modes of public transport such as railways, bus, on-demand transport, and taxis. It also includes the modes of transport not generally considered as public transport, such as rental cars, car-sharing, bike-sharing, ride-sharing, and chartered transport, i.e., transport involving the sharing of vehicles. 2.2. Structure of MaaS services In MaaS, a MaaS provider acts as an intermediary between the user and the transport providers and bundles the transport providers to provide various transport services to the user at one point (Fig. 1). An example of the classification of the evolution of MaaS is as follows: no integration (level 0): provide information separately, similar to the conventional approach; integration of information (level 1): collectively provide information on items such as timetable, route, and fee; integration of booking and payment (level 2): enabling searching, booking, and payment for a trip with multiple modes of transport;
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iatssr.2019.11.001 0386-1112/© 2019 International Association of Traffic and Safety Sciences. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Please cite this article as: K. Sakai, MaaS trends and policy-level initiatives in the EU, IATSS Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iatssr.2019.11.001
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government to start-ups responsible for the development of technology such as software necessary to realize the MaaS concept, likely boosted the realization of MaaS. In the realization of MaaS, promoting conversion from the use of private cars to the use of other modes of transport such as public transport is important. Private cars have the convenience of freely going anywhere, whenever one wants to do so. Accordingly, it is difficult to change consumer behavior if other modes of transport such as public transport cannot play such a role. That is, having a private car acts as insurance for the freedom of mobility, and the high cost associated with it can be considered as the insurance premium.
Fig. 1. Framework of MaaS.
integration of the services offer (level 3): bundling multiple modes of transport, allowing unlimited rides; integration of policy (level 4): cooperation between the public and private sectors [2)];. Examples of such services include Whim [3)] in Helsinki, Finland, led by the private sector, and UbiGo [4)] in Gothenburg, Sweden, led by the public sector. These are services equivalent to level 3, as they combine multiple modes of transport into one, and include services such as unlimited rides for one month. Other examples include Moovel (led by the private sector) in Stuttgart, Germany, and WienMobil (led by the public sector) in Vienna, Austria [5)]. 3. Birth of MaaS concept in Finland The concept of MaaS was first presented in ITS Europe held in Helsinki, Finland, in June 2014. It is said to have been proposed by Mr. Sampo Hietanen, who is the Founder and CEO of MaaS Global Oy. The basis of the idea, as excerpted from the presentation by Mr. Hietanen [6)] in the ITS World Congress, 2017, is as follows. In Finland, a transport user spends approximately 300 Euros per month for transport, which includes payment for public transport, whereas the spending for communication is only approximately one tenth of that, at 30 Euros per month. Accordingly, by spending or investing a part of the transport expenses in the field of communication, an improvement in productivity in the field of transport can be expected. Moreover, he also points out that, the rate of utilization of private cars is only approximately 4%, for which an owner pays approximately 240 Euros per month. The payments or investment are thus high compared with the low rate of utilization, making this system inefficient. That is, he advocated changing the payment structure from payments for private cars to that for public transport, and concurrently, shifting a part of the transport payment or investment capital to investment in ICT and IoT technology. Thus, he presumed that the use of ICT and IoT technologies will result in a reduction of the ultimate total payment for the field of transport, the field of communication, and for private cars, and improve the overall productivity. This is consistent with the direction the Finish government is aiming for, i.e., change to the use of public transport instead of private cars, which is considered effective in reducing traffic congestion in cities, and reducing CO2 emission of transport sector. It is presumed that it will provide a strong boost to the measures under the current situation where the conversion to the use of public transport and promoting its use are not progressing as desired. Moreover, a characteristic situation in Finland related to the industrial structure is that there is no automobile industry. Consequently, Finnish citizens must rely on imports for using private cars. However, there are global companies such as Nokia, and with abundant human resources with ICT skills, the ICT industry as such is in a position where it can export to global markets. Moreover, in 2013, with the sale of the Nokia cellular phone division to Microsoft, there was an overabundance of ICT professionals. All of these, together with support from the Finnish
4. Policy level initiatives in the EU and member states 4.1. EU In the EU, the principle of the European Commission, the governing body of the EU, is to focus on compatibility, interoperability, and continuity in the ITS policy. To realize this, it provides support on policy aspects. This apparently has its roots in the electronic toll collection system (ETC) initiative to rectify a situation, where the number of invehicle ETC units had to be equal to the number of borders (between member states) the vehicle needed to cross, as the fee collection method was different in each member state. Despite the various initiatives undertaken by the European Commission at the policy level, in the end, compatibility, interoperability, and continuity could not be realized within the EU member states, which is considered to have provided a learning opportunity. These activities started more than a decade ago. In the ITS Action Plan formulated in 2008 [7], the purpose was to accelerate and cooperate with the spread of ITS related to road transport, including connectivity with other modes of transport. In this plan, the focus was on the promotion of ensuring system compatibility and interconnectivity, and ITS services continuity, and on implementation conducted through activities coordinated at the EU level. One of 24 such specific actions is the promotion of multimodal journey planners. Note that the communication document positioning the ITS Action Plan shows the direction of the policies of the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, toward the member states. An ITS Directive [8)] was issued in 2010 for supporting the legal aspects in the actual implementation of ITS Action Plan. The ITS Directive is set to be adopted for each of the six priority actions concerning the specification with legal binding, having competitiveness, interconnectivity, and continuity. One such activity is the provision of EU-wide multimodal travel information service. Note that a Directive, after its proposal by the European Commission, is approved by the European Parliament and European Council, and calls for domestic legalization in each of the member states. In the ITS Directive, there is a provision of Delegated Regulation, which delegates to the European Union the power to approve non-legislative acts that are generally applicable in supplementing the directives. This also calls for delegating acts of law to the European Commission, regarding the formulation of specification for each of the six priority actions. After the establishment of the ITS directive, a Delegated Regulation [9)] concerning the provision of EU-wide multimodal travel information services was established in 2017. This made it mandatory for every member state to install National Access Point (digital interface where the data to be used can be accessed along with the metadata) and provide static and dynamic travel and traffic data with full compatibility and interoperability through entities such as transport providers. Through these measures, it can be considered that policy-level support has been realized to boost the development of infrastructure for information distribution toward the spread and development of MaaS in the EU.
Please cite this article as: K. Sakai, MaaS trends and policy-level initiatives in the EU, IATSS Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iatssr.2019.11.001
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4.2. EU member state (Finland) example Against the backdrop of such developments, Finland engaged in establishing the Act on Transport Services early on, for unifying transport-related laws into one, and unifying all transport services into one. Through these initiatives, Finland has realized a useroriented mobility service by promoting the digitization of transport services and even more effective use of data [10)]. In the first stage, the various regulations related to transport have been unified, and ensuring the interoperability of data and information systems has been made obligatory. This was issued in July 2018, and items related to providing open access to important data and the ITS Directive were issued in January 2018. In the second stage, in addition to road transport, the requirements for aviation, shipping, and railway services and the qualifications needed thereof have been relaxed. Moreover, it has been made mandatory that the service providers disclose important data such as service content and price. 5. Conclusion Initiatives on MaaS are progressing mainly in the EU including Finland. Such initiatives are characterized by government policy for promoting the use of public transport, and linking with private sector technologies against the background of advances in ICT and IoT. With respect to information, fees, bookings, and payments, the related system developments are being led by the private sector. However, the legal systems and the regulations of the administrative authorities are closely related, and the initiatives of the administrative authorities are considered essential in information distribution for the realization of MaaS. Notably, the European Commission is leading the member states with its EU-level initiatives. The goal of the concept of MaaS conceived in Finland is to improve productivity in the transportation sector through the use of ICT. The key idea here is that productivity and efficiency can be improved simply by moving from a system that allows payment for a trip each time with multiple modes of transport to a system that combines multiple modes of transport into one and includes services such as unlimited rides for one month. By improving convenience through the integration of itinerary planning, reservations, and payments, it should be possible to achieve the same level of convenience as private cars, which provide users the freedom to travel anywhere at any time. Furthermore, as noted above, it is possible to realize the concept of MaaS within private market principles. Therefore, the concept of MaaS is sustainable from the perspective of promoting the use of public transport, as it expands the usage of public transport beyond mobility-impaired people and brings ordinary drivers onboard as MaaS users. In Japan, declining birthrate and a rapidly increasing elderly population are critical issues; reduction of CO2 emissions in the transportation
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sector and public transport is expected to play an increasingly important role, but it appears that traditional policymaking in Japan is still focused on measures to support mobility-impaired people. The concept of MaaS, which can be realized within private market principles using ICT, and which is able to convert ordinary transportation consumers— especially private car users—into users of public transport, offers an opportunity to change the public transport policymaking in the future significantly. Meanwhile, actual MaaS services have just started, and it is believed that the verification of various aspects, such as the effect of promoting the use of public transport, the sustainability of the related systems and services, and the implementation of business models, will progress gradually. It is hoped that the realization of MaaS will revolutionize transport systems.
Acknowledgements In the process of writing this article, valuable information was obtained from the following people, who are gratefully acknowledged here: Mr. Juhani Jääskeläinen, who was at the time affiliated with the European Commission's Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (EC DG-CONNECT); Mr. Wolfgang Höfs, who was at the time also affiliated with EC DG-CONNECT; Mr. Sampo Hietanen and Ms. Iitu Leinonen of MaaS Global Oy; and Mr. Masahiro Kimura of the Embassy of Finland in Japan. References [1] F. example, S. Sedlik, Is MaaS Real or a Utopian Dream?, Presented at SIS04, ITS World Congress, Montreal, 2017. [2] Jana Sochor, Hans Arby, I.C. MariAnne Karlsson, the topology of mobility as a service: a tool for understanding effects on business and society, user behavior, and technical requirements, ITS world congress 2017, Montreal. [3] Whim website, https://whimapp.com/ [4] UbiGo website, http://www.ubigo.nu/ [5] ITS Australia Head Office, Mobility as a Service in Australia, Customer insights and opportunities http://www.its-australia.com.au/MaaSReport/ 2018. [6] S. Hietanen, MaaS Global, Presented at SIS114, ITS World Congress, Montreal, 2017. [7] European Commission, COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION, Action Plan for the Deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems in Europe (COM(2008)886 Final), 2008. [8] Directive 2010/40/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 7 July 2010 on the framework for the deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems in the field of road transport and for interfaces with other modes of transport, Off. J. Eur. Union, L207, pp. 1–13, 2010. [9] COMMISSION DELEGATED REGULATION (EU) 2017/1926 of 31 May 2017 supplementing Directive 2010/40/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council with regard to the provision of EU-wide multimodal travel information services, Off. J. Eur. Union, L272, pp. 1–13, 2017. [10] Matti Komonen, Parliament Approves Second Stage of Transport Code, International Law Office, 09, https://www.internationallawoffice.com/Newsletters/Shipping-Transport/Finland/HPP-Attorneys-Ltd/Parliament-approves-second-stageof-Transport-Code May 2018.
Please cite this article as: K. Sakai, MaaS trends and policy-level initiatives in the EU, IATSS Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iatssr.2019.11.001