Mobility Network Management- where TM 2.0 and MaaS meet

This article has been previously published in the ERTICO newsletter of the 25/11.

As travel demand increases and changes, cities continue to improve the planning, development, and operation of their multimodal transportation systems and as a result, the creation of a multimodal mobility management system is necessary. The pace of technology-driven innovation from the private sector in shared transportation services, vehicles, and networks is rapid, accelerating, and filled with opportunity. At the same time, city streets are a finite and scarce resource.

The task of traffic management has predominantly been limited to re-routing of traditional car traffic, but cities are increasingly developing multimodal transport systems and services. As a result, better information and re-routing functionalities for all transport modes and users are required if cities wish to see their mobility networks balanced and optimised. During the Virtual ITS Congress, the session on Mobility Network Management explored the approach of integrating the concepts of Interactive Traffic Management and Mobility as a Service, respectively known as TM 2.0 and MaaS into a fully interactive and collaborative Network Mobility Management System. In this orchestration of mobility, mobility modes are not dealt separately as such. The key element is the travel and not the ‘travel by car’, ’travel by autonomous shuttle’ or ‘travel by bike’. There is simply a ‘traveller’. The concepts of TM 2.0 and MaaS combined provide a solution.

While MaaS is concentrated mostly on delivering mobility services to travellers, it can also be a tool for data sharing between MaaS operators, transport service providers and TM, as well as a tool to influence users’ demands and preferences for travel. Predicting and adapting to passengers’ flow variations and needs, and even being in position to nudge them with incentivization techniques could act as a means to regulate traffic flows in more modes than one within the entire mobility system. In this way public aut