Enabling intermodal urban transport through complementary services: From Flexible Mobility Services to the Shared Use Mobility Agency

This paper explores the potential contribution that the public transport Agency can make to the emerging Mobility as a Service (MaaS) paradigm through the integration of regular collective transport services with complementary flexible transport schemes and other forms of shared-use transport. The latest ICT developments provide new opportunities to organise and offer collective and individual mobility services. In the evolving scenario of the service sharing economy we see this with a number of new mobility schemes-e.g. vehicle sharing and dynamic ride sharing schemes like Car2Go, DriveNow, BlaBlaCar, Uber, Lyft. We define a Flexible and Shared Use Mobility (FSUM) Agency; a single co-ordination centre of different flexible services and shared mobility schemes, which requires co-ordination and co-operation among different service providers, the integration of data and platforms, technical services and systems. The fundamental enabling technologies and standards are illustrated and the supporting ICT architecture outlined. Finally, the organisational aspects related to the operation of the Agency are discussed and illustrated with reference to the EC-funded PERHT project.