BCG Henderson Institute

For fans of traditional model trains, success is the constant movement of cars that easily negotiate tracks and tableaus, traversing mock villages, waterways, and places of business.

Modern mobility proponents — a group that includes cities around the world — seek perpetual motion, too, using both established forms of transit and new ones: ride sharing, free-floating bikes and scooters, and more. They aim to create a large-scale real-world version of that toy train vision, one that allows people to move quickly and seamlessly through metropolitan areas. Someone living in a suburb, for instance, could travel easily to work in a city, using an app that allows her, with a single click, to book and pay for, say, a shared autonomous electric vehicle that will take her from her doorstep to a train with a stop near her office.

This kind of access is called mobility as a service. MaaS enables end-to-end transit using the new mobility offerings that are proliferating in cities around the world as well as traditional modes like public transportation and taxi services. It relies on a digital platform to support all aspects of commuter journeys, from planning to optimized transit.

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