Dear reader,
This has been a very exciting year for the MaaS Alliance and its Members, with many news, events and activities. Here is a summary of what we have been busy doing.
The Alliance has grown from 60 to 90 members in 2019 with an impressive global focus by engaging organisations from South Korea, Japan, US and the UAE. In 2019 MaaS Alliance members gathered together for three plenary meetings and several thematic workshops and events. The members collaborated in Working Groups actively throughout the year building real-life preconditions and harmonised global approaches for Mobility as a Service.
On 11 April the Open Mobility Conference, co-organised by MaaS Alliance and TravelSpirit, brought 150 mobility experts and open ecosystem passionate industry representatives together. The event featured several keynotes from industry leaders, lightning talks from the frontrunners, panel discussions on the next steps, and interactive workshops to generate ideas and actions. The main focus was on how to create an open ecosystem for new mobility services and MaaS. You can read the report here.
We launched the Market Workshop series with the MOD Alliance. The first workshop took place in Paris on 25 September and looked at the role of insurance innovations in new mobility ecosystems. Following the success of this first one, kindly hosted by Allianz, the market workshop series will be continued next year.
On 13 September, MaaS Alliance participated in the 6th Florence Intermodal Forum “Towards EU-wide Multimodal Ticketing and Payment Systems” to discuss the challenges and enablers to deliver an EU wide multimodal ticketing and payment system. In October we co-organised the 5th MaaS Summit, together with the European Commission and the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications, in Helsinki in conjunction with the Digital Transport Days; the Summit addressed the questions of sustainability.
On 6 November, MaaS Alliance together with ERTICO organised the thematic breakfast meeting “Making mobility smarter” at the European Parliament. The breakfast meeting, hosted by MEP Henna Virkkunen, member of ITRE and TRAN Committees, brought together MEPs, parliamentary assistants, experts from the various committees of the Parliament and the representatives of the European Commission. ACEA, Rijkswaterstaat, MaaS Global and Europcar Mobility Group gave presentations highlighting state-of-the-art intelligent transport and green mobility solutions. The discussion touched on how to best deploy the latest technologies and support the roll-out of sustainable mobility solutions and the competitiveness of European industries.
Only recently, the MaaS Alliance joined the Global New Mobility Coalition, the community of shared, electric and autonomous mobility (SEAM) stakeholders, curated by the World Economic Forum and funded by ClimateWorks.
This year, MaaS Alliance published two reports; one focusing at challenges to deploying MaaS, written by the Governance & Business Models Working Groups; and one including recommendations on a user-centric approach for MaaS, written by the Users & Rules Working Group. The very successful “MaaS of the Month” series was launched in 2019 covering the most exciting MaaS implementations around the world and will continue in 2020. We would like to thank our three Working Groups for their hard work this year!
Additionally, the MaaS Alliance commissioned a legal study to support the development of MaaS by improving the common understanding of the legal framework and by clarifying the roles of public and private partners.
It has been a truly incredible year; we look forward to an even more exciting 2020!
Season’s greetings from all of us at the MaaS Alliance!
