The Metropolitan Transport Authority (ATM – Autoritat del Transport Metropolità) is a voluntary inter-administrative consortium of public transport administrations in the Catalonia region working in the counties of Alt Penedès, Baix Llobregat, Barcelonès, Garraf, Maresme, Vallès Occidental and Vallès Oriental. The consortium includes the Catalan government, or Generalitat de Catalunya, and the local governments of Barcelona City Council (Ajuntament de Barcelona), Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona (Metropolitan Area of Barcelona or AMB) and Associació de Municipis per la Mobilitat i el Transport Urbà (Association of Municipalities for Mobility and Urban Transport or AMTU).
ATM facilitates cooperation between the public administrations which own the collective public transport services and infrastructures in the Barcelona area. ATM joined the MaaS Alliance earlier this year for the opportunity to cooperate with other parties and to help shape the Mobility as a Service model in Europe. We spoke to Carme Fabregas, CTO at ATM and lecturer in “Smart Mobility” at UPC School of Professional and Executive Development, about why the MaaS concept is relevant to ATM business for public transport operators.
As Carme explained, “technology will play either the enabler or the stick at the wheel.”
“My role as tech responsible at ATM is to lead the transport technology advancements for ATM and thus paving the path for the operators in the region to ensure not only the smooth operations of our current system, but also to look at future interoperability and scalability. We do that by eventually promoting an integrated transport system in which the operators can join to provide good solutions to their customers to ensure a sustainable door-to-door transport. We have already in place a good functioning integrating ticketing system but believe that the Mobility as a Service concept can go a step further. MaaS solutions bring a new way of conceiving transport usage hence contributing to the improvement of the unbalance of public transport usage with regard of the use of private cars in our cities”.
Customers want easy and time-efficient travel. They have different priorities; some consider comfort more important, some are more worried about the environmental impact of the transport systems, and others look at the most convenient solutions. This is what MaaS is about, creating a tailored solution for each traveller by providing the choice in one single payment.
“Being involved from the first moment in the creation of the MaaS Alliance was really important for us. We see a great advantage in being part of this club of organisations and companies across Europe as we can shape together the future mobility model in Europe. And of course seeing what is happening in other countries will eventually help us to set our priorities with regards to decision making on our local actual projects”.
