MaaS Alliance suggests support measures for mobility sector

In order to leverage the positive aspects of the pandemic, such as an increase in cycling and the transformation towards green and digital mobility, the MaaS Alliance has published a briefing document for legislative and financial measures supporting the digital and green transformation of the mobility sector during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The mobility sector has been strongly hit by the COVID-19 crisis with a wide societal and economic impact. During the lockdown period the transport demand in almost all affected countries went drastically down. Later, in the phase of gradual de-confinement, cities and transport operators face challenges in matching demand, capacity and space needs while trying to comply with the social distancing requirements. The long-term impacts and their gravity are still difficult to predict. While this crisis was something difficult to foresee and that no one wished for, its consequences have included some positive aspects as well, such as an increase in cycling and the rapid take-off of teleworking,” MaaS Alliance wrote.

As a part of the planned stimulus packages, MaaS Alliance has invited Governments, public organisations, and institutions to launch targeted legislative and financial measures to support the digital and green transformation of the mobility sector, benefiting cities, citizens and the environment.

The MaaS Alliance suggested that the availability and provision of multimodal integrated mobility services, as well the cooperation of the public and private sector in service mobility provision, needs to be boosted for this to take place.

The suggested measures include:

• Incentive schemes for greener behaviour and optimised mobility mix
• Investments in trust and creation of an open MaaS ecosystem
• Investments to support interoperability and integration readiness of public transport to MaaS
• Support to active and micromobility schemes in cities and their integration to multimodal systems.

The suggested measures were selected based on their potential to be highly impactful, neutral to changes with regards to the technology roadmaps and universally applicable to different environments and administrative systems.

Piia Karjalainen, Secretary General of MaaS Alliance, told Intelligent Transport: “Although our everyday battle against the virus is still going on, I see this as a turning point in urban mobility with an increased appetite for new mobility solutions and planned stimulus packages. Many of the transformation that we’ve witnessed during the past six months would normally have taken 10-15 years. Political decisions related to the stimulus and green recovery packages can bring important changes to smart mobility and in this context, the MaaS Alliance wanted to highlight some of the most impactful measures to be considered by Governments around the world.

“We would like to encourage measures that support the availability and provision of multimodal integrated mobility services. Ensuring that new mobility services are treated equally in terms of taxation schemes and creating incentives for the use of green mobility services, (targeted directly to end-users or corporations providing mobility-related schemes for their employees) would be really effective tools. The crisis has also shown the need for further complementarity of public and private sectors in mobility service provision. This is another front we would like to see some efforts, e.g. investments to improve the integration readiness of public transport and micromobility services to multimodal offerings. Complementarity of services is also an important factor for better resilience that is very much needed as different disruptions and shocks will be part of the new normal.”