Mobility as a Service Plans: How Much do we Prefer Flexibility?

Global megatrends and societal changes are driving us away from traditional business models and towards the technology driven ‘as a service’ economy. Transportation is no exception, where the Mobility as a Service (MaaS) concept has recently emerged capitalising on ICT developments and the sharing economy. Through MaaS users are able to fulfil all their mobility needs via a single, digital platform. The mobility operator integrates all offerings and customers can purchase monthly plans, similar to those that exist in other sectors. As a novel concept, there is still much to understand about how these mobility plans should be created for them to truly satisfy user needs. This study aims to address one of these, namely whether users prefer to choose from fixed MaaS bundles or they would rather prefer flexibility through menu based/ create you own approaches. First, a survey and a personalised pivot style stated preference (SP) experiment is designed and carried out in London. The SP has three fixed and one menu based options with transportation mode specific (amount of each mode, special features) and non-mode specific (price, transferability) attributes. Second, multinomial choice analysis is used to reveal preferences for fixed versus flexible MaaS plans and to determine the most important plan characteristics that influence this choice. By conducting an original data collection and analysis specifically aimed at MaaS plans, this research will provide valuable insights for the many proposed MaaS schemes, policy makers and the sector in general.