Mobility as a Service is the answer – but what was the question?
Energietage 2019, a trade fair for experts from industry, administration and research, is currently taking place in Berlin. From 20 to 22 May, visitors to the fair can attend 58 events with close to 400 speakers to find out about topics related to Germany’s energy transformation and climate protection, innovations in the energy sector and future-enable concepts for buildings. Caroline Held, Senior Consultant at civity, will take part in a panel discussion on Monday evening that will shed light on the trend towards Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS). DB Connect, Volkswagen, Animus and the Chair of Transport (FH Potsdam) will also be represented. Frank Christian Hinrichs, Managing Director of inno2grid, will moderate the event.
Despite a steadily growing range of car sharing, ride-sharing and pooling services, the number of car owners across the country is not falling. The recent introduction of MaaS providers is only leading to a higher number of cars in high-density areas and a cannibalization of public transport. The average user of these services is young, lives centrally in a large German city with a well-developed public transport network and does not (yet) own a car. However, this description only applies to a small part of the population. In order to persuade average Germans to get rid of their own cars, it will take more than just a few hundred cars available for sharing. A good and, more importantly, reliable public transport service as well as the penalisation of motorised individual traffic, for instance, through parking space management or the reduction of traffic lanes for cars in densely populated areas, are the basic prerequisites. Mobility-as-a-Service, supplementing public transport, can then contribute towards the transformation of traffic, especially in peripheral areas.