How Mobility-as-a-Service Can Encourage Green Behavior and Low-Carbon Transport

NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / April 8, 2024 / FedEx Corporation

Authors: Su Song, Miaoqing Zhong, and Ding Tan

This article was originally published on WRI Insights: How Mobility-as-a-Service Platforms Encourage Low-Carbon Transportation and is from the report, Mobility-as-a-Service Guideline for Chinese Cities and Cases Studies. WRI China's Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) project is part of the Mobility and Accessibility Program (MAP), a collaboration between WRI and FedEx.

A new digital platform being piloted in cities around the world is making public transportation more efficient, economical, and accessible, while encouraging low-carbon travel.

Mobility-as-a-Service is an on-demand service that integrates various forms of transportation services into a single platform accessible to travelers via a digital app. The smart phone platform acts as a one-stop travel planning and payment system, encouraging users to plan their trips via shared bikes, metros, buses, and other green forms of transport with support from real-time travel information.

Many countries around the world are piloting Mobility-as-a-Service in their cities, including Finland, Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Singapore, the United States, Sweden, the Netherlands, Australia, and Belgium. Learning from these early programs will help design a more successful platform, resulting in less carbon and congestion in cities.

Beijing's pilot, for example, is a unique case that nudges travelers away from private cars toward greener travel modes (like public transport or bike sharing) by linking the Mobility-as-a-System platform with local carbon markets, which rewards travelers for choosing greener travel methods.

Beijing's Green Mobility-as-a-Service Journey

Beijing has been piloting a Mobility-as-a-Service platform since 2019. By opening the app on a mobile device and typing in the destination, the platform provides many different travel planning options with different durations, modes, prices, and other information. The current platform integrates most transport services, such as bus, metro, shared bikes, ridesharing, and taxis.

Since its launch, the platform has consistently adhered to the city's "green and integrated" transport development strategy, receiving positive public responses. As of today, more than 30 million users have used the app, providing 4.5 million daily trips that include green transport services.

While this data is a very positive start to the program, more progress is needed to shift behavior from private car trips. As of 2022, the motor vehicle fleet in Beijing reached 7.1 million, including 4.9 million private cars. Total daily trips in central city totaled 33.9 million, with green transport, including walking, biking, and public transit, accounting for 73.4%.