Around the world, companies and muncipalities are experimenting with Mobility as a Service (MaaS). Fast Company describes how a new company, MaaS Global, is changing the thinking about transportation, in Helsinki, Finland:
If you need to go somewhere, you pull up a new app, which calculates the best way to get there—public transit, a bike-share bike, taxi, a rental car, or a combination. Instead of buying individual tickets, you pay a monthly fee of €249. …
Users can choose to link their calendars with the app, so routes will be planned in advance. With each trip, it’s possible to make a choice of transport mode based on what’s cheapest or greenest or most convenient—or mood….
MaaS Global is “in talks” with several cities in North America, Fast Company says. The company may or may not have devised a viable economic model — a fixed monthly prescription that doesn’t vary by usage seems problematic to me. But the company is only one of many experimenting in this space. Sooner or later, someone will figure out how to make it work.
Bacon’s bottom line: I’ve often referred to the integration of smart phones, algorithms and transportation as the Uber revolution because the ride-scheduling company Uber developed it first. But Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is much bigger than Uber, and its potential ramifications are even more far reaching. First and most important, it can save people money and expand their transportation options, thus improving their quality of life. Second, MaaS could reverse the decades-long decline in shared ridership, meaning that we can get much more mileage (so to speak) out of our existing infrastructure.
Virginia can continue approaching transportation as it always has — by building new stuff, at a cost of billions of dollars a year — or it can foster the growth of Mobility as a Service. We Virginians need to ask ourselves, how can we encourage innovative transportation companies to set up shop in Virginia? We reached the right solution with Uber and Lyft, enabling them to compete in the transportation marketplace. That was a good start, but what else can the public sector do to create a welcoming environment for entrepreneurs to expand beyond what is essentially a taxicab service?
The idea is just hanging out there, waiting for a champion. We probably can’t expect much from Republicans and Democrats, who are beholden to entrenched special interests. (The “transportation” sector has contributed roughly $35 million over the past decade to Virginia political candidates, according to the Virginia Public Access Project.) Republicans are the party of roads, and Democrats the party of mass transit. Both transportation modes are more than a century old, and both have much to fear from the MaaS revolution.
Only one party, the Libertarian Party, is the natural home for entrepreneurs and innovators who seek to disrupt the status quo. If Libertarians want to broaden their popular appeal by creating community-based, private-sector solutions for real-world challenges, then they should lead the charge for Mobility as a Service.
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