Public transport PRODUCTS & SOLUTIONS International Transportation | Collection 2020 31 Integrating demandresponsive transportation Bridging the gap between public transit and individual mobility in a Mobility-as-a-Service ecosystem Demand-responsive transit, Microtransit, Mobility-as-a-Service, Shared mobility New mobility services are expanding quickly, putting pressure on public transit. Cities are challenged to embrace mobility innovations while meeting overarching public mobility objectives. In the advent of autonomous driving, taking an active role becomes ever more important for cities. Digitalization enables cities to become mobility orchestrators by building an integrated urban mobility ecosystem and flexibilizing traditional public transit via the means of demand-responsive transit. We discuss critical ingredients to a successful implementation of a city-operated on-demand MaaS landscape. Lukas Foljanty, Mark-Philipp Wilhelms U rban mobility is on the verge of fundamental change, driven by an ever-growing market of mobility services and the advent of autonomous vehicles (AV). The introduction of (shared) AVs will radically change mobility behavior, and today’s share of modes of transportation will be distributed anew [1]. Despite major OEMs and technology companies increasing focus on AVs, it will take some time until marketable solutions can master the complexity of urban traffic conditions and are accepted by the public. While AVs promise significant benefits to the individual and society, regulators become increasingly aware that they have to play an active role as urban mobility orchestrators to ensure that the gains outweigh the potential drawbacks. Paving the way to a shared autonomous mobility ecosystem, today, public stakeholders face a rapidly developing mobility services market. Novel private players are entering cities at unprecedented speed to profit from the Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) market that is expected to exceed USD 60 billion by the end of 2021 [2]. Globally, customers are quickly embracing these services, elevating the need for cities to act. Policymakers are seeking a more active role by becoming active providers of new mobility services or by integrating existing mobility services into one easily accessible MaaS platform. Ultimately, to ensure that these mobility innovations serve the city’s overarching smart mobility strategy. Based on our experience gained in rolling out demand-responsive transportation and MaaS services, we outline the two key ingredients to a successful implementation of MaaS in a city - integration, and flexibilization. By binding together all publicly available mobility services in one platform and by introducing highly flexible demandresponsive public transit (DRPT) services, cities can create the ideal basis already today to ready themselves for the autonomous future. Integration - Seamless access to a city’s complete mobility landscape The rapid urbanization and re-urbanization in many parts of the world is creating complex challenges for the livability within cities. Besides housing, waste, or water, aspects of individual mobility, and its adverse impacts on the environment and quality of life are vital challenges faced by cities globally. While traditional mass transit is an efficient and environmentally friendly mode to transport large numbers of commuters, it lacks the benefits of individual motorized transportation. Convenience and comfort are limited, it is overcrowded during peak hours and slow to adapt to changing demands, as the construction of new lines requires significant infrastructure investments and takes many years to complete. With increasing wealth, individual motorized transport becomes the preferred mode of transportation for many. Yet, it creates various challenges to the livability of a city such as its enormous land consumption, harmful pollution, or an increase in traffic injuries and deaths. While AVs promise to overcome issues such as parking shortages and traffic jams, they also are expected to further increase individualized motorized traffic due to accessibility and comfort [3]. Cities are therefore searching for ways to shift the mobility behavior of their citizens away from individual motorized transport. A growing number of cities are strategizing mobility ecosystems, encompassing multiple mobility options as an alternative to the private car. With the current influx of capital into mobility startups, cities have no difficulty in attracting new mobility service provides like bikesharing, car-sharing, or e-scooter-sharing. However, recent cases have shown that merely introducing a large number of different mobility services onto the streets is no guarantee for acceptance by the general public and, thus, for achieving the city’s mobility strategy goals especially as most providers provide a singular solution to parts of the journey, only. The key to success is the smart integration of the complementary mobility services into one platform, which allows travelers to access the entire mobility ecosystem within a city seamlessly. The level of integration ideally enables trip planning by providing real-time information, booking, and payment of all modes of transport from within a single app. The customer-centric system further enables users to create only one mobility account that grants access to mobility options for almost any occasion [4]. Lower levels of integration that only pro- PRODUCTS & SOLUTIONS Public transport International Transportation | Collection 2020 32 vide information, but lack seamless booking functionality, fail to deliver a compelling state-of-the-art user experience of a holistic mobility ecosystem, thus creating friction. Travelers long for the ease of mind that the right mobility options are readily available in almost any situation at the tap of a finger. Only then will they consider switching from their private cars. To ensure that a convenient yet affordable mix of transport modes is readily available and accessible, public transit should constitute the core of a MaaS platform. Therefore, public stakeholders, such as the local public transit agency (PTA) or municipal entities, are prime candidates to assume the operational responsibility of a platform. Their neutrality creates a level playing field for all new mobility service providers joining the platform, grants policymakers access to data, creates trust amongst the general public, and ensures that the MaaS ecosystem works in the best interest of the citizen [5]. Moovel - who pioneered the concept of a full-fledged MaaS app already in 2012 - has provided many cities in Europe, Asia, and North America with the technology to operate MaaS solutions successfully [6]. One of the latest implementations was launched in late 2018 in Dusseldorf, Germany. With the “Mobil in Düsseldorf” app, local PTA Rheinbahn offers a one-stop-shop for urban mobility, including real-time information and ticketing for public transit, booking of car-sharing, bike-sharing, scooter-sharing, and taxihailing. Furthermore, to provide integrated last mile solutions for commuters from out of town, the app also reflects Park+Ride locations in the trip planning. The technology behind the easy-to-use, customer-centric MaaS app is localized to the specific requirements of the city and integrates with the local mobility service providers. moovel’s solution solves the complexities of operating a MaaS platform for the PTA by providing core operator services such as transaction management and CRM systems, driver license checks, or self-integration for 3rd party mobility service providers. Apart from providing citizens with integrated, seamless access to shared individual mobility services and public transit, thus creating significant pull effects to shifting mobility behavior away from private cars, digitalization can also aid traditional public transit to overcome its systemic weaknesses. By introducing DRPT, cities have the opportunity to control and learn from a type of mobility service that will be of greatest importance in the age of AVs - flexible ondemand mobility. Flexibilization - Bridging the gap between public mass transit and public individual transit In high-density urban areas, mass transit has been the most efficient form of mobility for decades and is likely to be in the era of AVs. However, while public transit has its strengths in moving large numbers of passengers on the main corridors, it has systemic weaknesses in lower-density areas or daytimes. Mainly bus services on fixed routes with fixed timetables face the dilemma of the economic necessity to adapt the service frequency to the low demand, effectively further diminishing demand and increasing the attractiveness of individual transportation options. In effect, they can neither satisfy the needs of passengers nor operators. Pre-digital DRPT services are operating in many locations globally, primarily in rural areas. Yet, many of these pre-digital services fail to deliver compelling user experience, characterized by low availability, long waiting times, extensive telephonebased booking periods, and the lack of cashfree payment options. Consequently, services suffer from low ridership, yet are expensive to operate for municipalities. New technologies allow overcoming these constrains and lift DRPT into the 21st century. Novel, digital demand-responsive transit services have mostly been introduced by private players with a business-to-consumer (B2C) business model. While these innovative on-demand mobility solutions can generally help cities increase the attractiveness of a car-light lifestyle, oftentimes, B2C services have been launched predominantly in high-density urban areas with usually high public transit service quality. Due to a lack of integration into the existing public transit offerings, they can pose a risk of cannibalizing public transit ridership instead of supporting it. Consequently, cities have adopted different strategies to address this situation ranging from prohibitive approaches via the means of strict regulation to the complete replacement of public transit with private DRT services. However, due to the apparent opportunities that on-demand mobility opens for upgrading public transit networks, a growing number of PTAs are considering introducing DRPT services. The main advantage from a city’s perspective is that DRPT can be positioned in accordance with the city’s overarching mobility strategy and planned precisely to supplement and not cannibalize the local public transit network while providing unprecedented convenience and flexibility to users. Considering the system characteristics of traditional public transit, DRPT is ideally suited as first/ last mile feeder service to the main corridors. By operating on a demandresponsive basis in lower demand areas and daytimes, DRPT helps channel dispersedly distributed passengers onto corridors on which large vehicles in high frequency can efficiently operate, thus further strengthening public transit in its systemic strengths. To ensure that DRPT is perceived as an integral part of the public transit system, deep integration of both is necessary. User acceptance can only be achieved if intermodal journeys combining public transit and DRPT are reliable and seamless. Stuttgarter Straßenbahnen (SSB) and Karlsruher Verkehrsverbund (KVV) are successfully offering DRPT services deeply integrated with existing mass public transit. • “SSB Flex” (figure 1) was launched in June 2018 by SSB in Stuttgart in three areas of Stuttgart to cater to different demands and target groups [7]. • “MyShuttle”, initiated by KVV in June 2019 [8], provides highly-flexible trans- Figure 1: Intermodal trips with DRPT and public transit in “SSB Flex” Public transport PRODUCTS & SOLUTIONS International Transportation | Collection 2020 33 portation in the suburbs of Karlsruhe and is integrated into the regional MaaS platform “kvv.mobil”. The technology behind both services was provided by moovel and was specifically designed to meet the needs of PTAs, most importantly, seamless integration with public transit. Intermodal connections provide convenient on-demand shuttle services from the traveler’s doorstep to a nearby public transit hub. By utilizing various realtime data sources, the routing of the DRPT trip ensures a timely interchange with the fixed-route train or bus line. Integrated mobile ticketing with in-app payment enables passengers to change seamlessly from on-demand shuttle to traditional public transit without having to buy a separate ticket. Monthly and annual public transit passes are reflected in the price per trip as a discount to incentivize regular usage. Moovel’s white-label solution is distributed in the look and feel of the PTA, immediately creating a sense of trust for the citizens in the new the DRPT service. Key to the success of a DRPT service is a high availability to ensure short waiting times and reliable service quality. Ideally, DRPT is embedded into the city’s MaaS platform, such as “MyShuttle” integration in “kvv.mobil” to give travelers alternative mobility options in case of unavailability of on-demand shuttles - or when more individual modes are situationally preferred. Moovel’s modular system architecture gives PTAs the flexibility to do so. Laying the foundation today for AVs - DRPT integrated into the city’s MaaS platform AVs will radically change urban mobility. Boundaries between car-sharing, taxi, ridehailing, DRT, and public bus services will become increasingly blurry [9]. While the exact composition of the future mobility mix is yet to be determined and will presumably vary from city to city, this change will also strongly affect public transit. Even though the introduction of AVs onto city streets on a relevant scale will take time, the battle for control over the future urban mobility is being fought already today. B2Cfocused private players push new mobility services into cities in an attempt to grab a market share that will help them become dominant mobility provides in the shared autonomous future. Cities and their public transit agencies have the opportunity to shape their role in that future proactively. However, to do so, they need to start setting the course today by actively introducing new mobility services under their regime. By operating a publicly controlled MaaS platform, cities can engage in data-driven decision making to ensure that a healthy mix of mobility modes is provided that promotes the city’s future mobility strategy. The data that the platform generates can give cities an invaluable asset for understanding user behavior and how the mobility ecosystem needs to evolve in the future. Moovel provides cities with in-depth business intelligence analyses that help draw the right conclusions. Additional to a MaaS platform, PTAs also have an excellent opportunity to prepare for shared autonomous services by introducing driver-based DRPT services today. By operating an algorithm-based, smart ride-pooling solution today, PTAs can experiment with service designs to be prepared for the autonomous future. Therefore, today’s DRPT projects should not be evaluated only according to their performance and costs in presence, but also according to the strategic relevance for the future. By utilizing a technology that is designed to supplement public transit rather than compete with it and that gives PTAs full access to all data, moovel’s technology gives cities the chance to adapt their public mobility system in time to have adequate answers for the future urban mobility challenges. ■ REFERENCES [1] Merfeld, K., Wilhelms, M.-P., Henkel, S., Kreutzer, K. (2019): Carsharing with Shared Autonomous Vehicles: Uncovering Drivers, Barriers and Future Developments - A Four-Stage Delphi Study. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 144, 66-81 [2] Juniper Research, moovel North America (2018): Exploring Mobilityas-a-Service (MaaS) - The New Era of Urban Mobility, Portland [3] Merfeld, K., Wilhelms, M.-P., Henkel, S. (2019): Being Driven Autonomously - A Qualitative Study to Elicit Consumers’ Overarching Motivational Structures. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 107, 229-247 [4] Duong, T., Ruoff, P., Buffat, M. (2018): Information or integration? Supporting multimodal travelling through mobility apps. Vienna [5] Arthur D. Little (2018): The Future of Mobility 3.0 - Reinventing mobility in the era of disruption and creativity [6] Foljanty, L. (2013): Multimodale Wegeplanung mit Smartphone- Apps, Verkehr+Technik, Berlin [7] Stuttgarter Straßenbahn AG (2018): SSB Flex: Unser Add-On zu Bus & Bahn. Online: www.ssb-ag.de/ kundeninformation/ ssb-flex [8] Karlsruher Verkehrsverbund GmbH (2018): KVV MyShuttle: Dein Abholer vom KVV. Online: www.kvv.de/ service/ angeboteaktionen/ myshuttle-ettlingen.html [9] Stocker, A., & Shaheen, S. (2018): Shared Automated Mobility: Early Exploration and Potential Impacts. In Road Vehicle Automation 4 (S. 125-139). Cham: Springer Lukas Foljanty, Senior Manager Smart Cities, moovel Group GmbH, Berlin (DE) lukas.foljanty@moovel.com Mark-Philipp Wilhelms, Dr. Manager Smart Cities, moovel Group GmbH, Berlin (DE) mark-philipp.wilhelms@moovel.com Figure 2: Today’s mobility innovations pave the way to shared autonomous services