Siemens has presented its latest Mobility as a Service (MaaS) systems to fellow members of the MaaS Alliance, which is the public-private partnership that is creating the foundations for a common approach to MaaS across Europe and beyond from a legal, technical and market perspective.
Initially a Finnish concept, Mobility as a Service (MaaS) proposes a novel transportation paradigm that aims to reduce the need to own a car by providing travelers with easy access to a range of transportation alternatives, which are packaged according to personal preferences and can be paid for based on actual use. A truly effective MaaS environment seamlessly combines offerings from different transportation services, including public transportation, taxis, shared bikes, and demand-responsive transportation such as car share or ride share; it provides details on alternative travel combinations in a transparent manner; and allows travelers to pay in a stress-free fashion, either per use or based on a subscription plan, in the same way that people pay their smartphone bills.
MaaS is expected to revolutionize the way people move around: with access to personalized, smart mobility services, travelers will be less dependent on their cars. Public and private providers of transportation services will benefit from a more efficient allocation of resources, enabled by a better understanding of travel demand; local authorities will profit from the deployment of sustainable transport services; and business enterprises will have access to new markets and opportunities for the development of smart mobility services.
In a MaaS ecosystem, data from various transport service providers is collected onto a single platform layer, enhanced with features such as multimodal journey planning or mobile payment services, and made available to travelers. Since its participation in the Open Mobility project in Berlin, and through project activities in several European cities to create the technical, legal, and commercial prerequisites for setting up MaaS operations, Siemens has become one of the leading international providers of smart solutions for combined mobility and an active member of the MaaS Alliance.
Siemens has recently showcased its systems and references to support travelers on their end-to-end intermodal journey. The company’s three SiMobility systems are:
• Connect – is the foundation platform that integrates the mobility services of various providers into a single-source portfolio for the user. The platform provides system interfaces for transport operators and mobility service providers, as well as integrated processes such as real-time passenger information, multimodal journey planning, booking, ticket purchase and payment, across various transport modes;
• Flow – is a smartphone application that provides proximity-based information for passengers along their routes, in stations, at bus stops, and in vehicles, buses and trains. The smartphone app detects nearby Bluetooth beacons and receives transmitted real-time information about transportation options, tourist information or marketing messages;
• JustGo – is the hands-free Be-in/Be-out (BiBo) smartphone-based ticketing system that detects Bluetooth beacons while the traveler is moving and sends the data to the backend for processing the route taken. Billing takes place on the basis of the route actually traveled, so the cheapest fare can be automatically applied.
