Learning from the MaaS experience in Augsburg, Germany

Abstract

Recent technological advances have led to a surge of new shared transportation modes. This development has inspired the concept ‘Mobility as a Service’ (MaaS), which seeks to integrate the emerging shared modes with conventional public transportation. Enabled by this development, multimodal mobility plans (i.e., mobile phone plans for mobility) have become a topic of particular interest both for transportation scholars and practitioners due to their centrality to business models and trial designs. This paper reports on the pilot that led to Germany’s first commercial MaaS subscription bundles: How did the city of Augsburg (quietly) manage to become a (leading) MaaS implementor in just one year at times when others struggle years after their first trial?