Earlier this month, Moovit sent members of its team to Barcelona, Spain to present Moovit’s Mobility as a Service (MaaS) solutions at one of the world’s biggest mobility events of the year, Smart City Expo World Congress. The congress, that’s located in Barcelona’s impressive Gran Via promised to be a meeting spot for smart city sectors and an innovative platform for urban action worldwide, and it didn’t disappoint.

This year’s Smart City Expo World Congress was the largest ever with over 21k attendees from 700 cities across 146 countries, 844 exhibitors, and 420 speakers. If you weren’t able to attend the Congress this year, below is Moovit’s summary with the highlights from the event.

All about MaaS

With regards to mobility, the hot topic from many of the presentations across the two days was Mobility as a Service (MaaS), which in short is defined as all your urban mobility options, including payment, in one app. This includes the complete integration of all types of multimodal services and essentially the movement away from private cars towards public transit, ride-share, car-share, bike-share, dockless mobility, and walking.  

Multimodal route planning is imperative for a seamless trip for commuters. UITP, the international organisation for public transport authorities and operators, referred to this as “combined mobility.” Cities can’t rely on one type of mobility option. In order to meet the true demand of riders, all available local options must be provided to offer choice and allow for the most appropriate and efficient route to be chosen by the individual.

New Innovations/Visions

Future mobility — many cities exhibited their smart city innovations including autonomous shuttles, smart parking, and concepts for safe and inclusive cities

Disruptive payment systems — dynamic pricing and subscription services will be part of future urban mobility

Autonomous public transit vehicles — this is already happening for example in Scotland, the autonomous bus is being implemented by 2021.

Protecting Our Futures

One of the priorities for cities is to increase the use of public transportation and to create more sustainable and “green” services which are safer, and cause less pollution in cities. Cities are looking to implement MaaS solutions on one app used by all citizens to encourage use of convenient alternatives to people who usually use their car, ultimately to help solve congestion in their city and therefore pollution. If MaaS is successful in a city, locals will give up their cars with the ultimate goal of having pedestrian-friendly and zero-emission cities.

Data is Key

Mobility isn’t a one-size-fits-all proposition for each city. Therefore, personalized services are required to maximize efficiency within the city’s offerings. This is done by using mobility data — the type of data that Moovit provides through it’s Moovit’s MaaS solutions. Moovit holds the largest repository of urban mobility data in the world, gathering up to four billion data points a day. With this data, cities are able to revolutionize their service to help transform their city’s mobility ecosystem.

Don’t miss the mobility discussions in 2019 — meet Moovit at Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona next year (19 to 21 November 2019). If you can’t wait until then to hear more about Moovit’s MaaS Solutions, click here for more information or email sales@moovit.com.