Scaling up beyond MaaS - Real integration of mobility in everyday life
Imagine you start the day at home: as part of your rent, you already have access to every mode. You pick the bike option, ride to the station, and take the train to work - it all unlocks seamlessly because it’s included in your rent. On the way home you walk to the supermarket and get mobility points for the choices you made. Later, your theatre ticket doesn’t just get you a seat - it also includes the ride there (taxi when you need it).
That “served, not educated” experience is the north star for what comes next after a bundle of mobility options as services. After nearly two decades of building and testing, my key learning is that MaaS driven by actual needs of users and customers creates clear value for about 30% of city residents - mainly those who use two or more modes per week, because only then do bundling and cross-modal benefits really add up. Multimodal Mobility becomes intuitive when pricing is multimodal, not mode-by-mode.
This points to a joint competitive target bigger than any single player: car ownership. Roughly 76% of the mobility wallet is still absorbed by the owned vehicle, and no standalone mode can outcompete the car — only joint offers can match the perceived freedom of ownership. Two more practical insights:
- UX details decide adoption—e.g., reducing micromobility unlock time from 5 seconds to <2 seconds changed the testability of the service.
- The upside is measurable: one study found 97% of multimodal trips used sustainable modes, and giving up the first private car can cut household emissions by about 55%.
To make that market work, it needs private investment - and for that, roles must be explicit with clear public leadership in the market model: public authorities ensure a level playing field (open APIs, fair contracts) and steer outcomes with incentive pools toward societal goals, while private platform operators excel at service creation, packaging, interface design and sales. The next leap is embedding mobility into housing, jobs, retail, and events - shifting from MaaS to Mobility as a Feature.
