Our living environments are changing. The demography of society is changing and life expectancy is increasing. The importance of the residential location as the central starting point of life and the paths decreases, instead chains of paths are adapted to the working location. Rural areas are confronted with a reduction in utilities and local infrastructure. These and many other changes must therefore be included in considerations and revisions of the mobility system. The ITS Forum, which took place on 26.03.2019 in Vienna, therefore focused on mobility as a service (MaaS), placing users at the centre of the discussions.

All about MaaS

The ITS Austria understands Mobility as a Service to be a user-oriented, multimodal service that aims to largely unite the offers of existing public and private mobility providers in an integrative service (e.g. one-stop shop principle) and to function as a basis for new services. For Austria an own MaaS made in Austria concept is to be developed. With "MaaS miA", the multimodal mobility offers are to be organised in such a way that all citizens have non-discriminatory access to mobility, their individual mobility needs are realised and a mobility guarantee is achieved. A strong focus of MaaS miA will be on public transport, as our mobility needs to become more sustainable in order to achieve the climate goals. But also private providers, large as well as small, play an important role - ultimately there has to be a common understanding among all actors.

What happens next?

Howdoes an ecosystem have to look like in order for Mobility as a Service to be implemented? This is exactly what the ITS Austria is currently working on: The goal is to create a concept - an architecture - that unites private and public providers and thus enables MaaS miA. At this year's ITS Austria conference in October, the first results of what MaaS made in Austria defines and possible guidelines will be presented.