News & Events

On 26 September 2019, the third edition of “Smart City Now – Conference & Expo“, the reference event for themes related to urban innovation, was held in Milan.

The event, organized by the Cluster Technologies for Smart Cities & Communities Lombardy, in collaboration with Innovability, was an opportunity for discussion between companies and public administrations in Lombardy on the scenarios of the future urban and metropolitan city.

More than 250 participants, including companies and representatives of the public administration, 40 speakers in the two plenary sessions and in the 3 workshops reserved and 33 companies including sponsors, exhibitors and partners took part to the event.

The main novelty of this edition was the new location – MIND – Milano Innovation District – the area that hosted Expo 2015 and that is turning into a district of science, knowledge and innovation of excellence, becoming a real laboratory for the Smart Cities of the future.

Among the several initiatives and projects, the Maas4EU project was showcased to the participants by Tito Stefanelli, senior expert in transport and mobility planning at TRT Trasporti e Territorio.

Moving in urban areas is becoming easier for many Europeans. Thanks to a new partnership with Circ, one of Europe’s leading micro-mobility operators, Moovit, the leading provider of MaaS (Mobility as a Service) services and the world’s first urban mobility app, is including e-scooters to its service.

Within Moovit’s free app, users can access a wide range of public and private transport services and find cheaper and more efficient travel options that save time and reduce the need for a car for the first and last mile.

Free floating shared mobility is an important component of any MaaS platform, improving multi-modality in the urban environment.

The wide range of services available allows users to customize their trips according to their needs, often resulting in shorter travel times. Free floating transport services also tend to be more environmentally-friendly, as they reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

Thanks to the partnership between Circ and Moovit, users will be able to find the nearest Circ e-scooter within the Moovit app. The service will be first implemented in a limited number of European countries, then it will be extended to a larger group in the coming weeks.

The full story is available at this link.

A study that has been recently published by Ramboll consulting and MaaS Global, titled “Whimpact: Insights from the World’s First Mobility as a Service Solution”.

The study is based on actual annual data from Whim, the world’s first MaaS service commercially available, which brings together various modes of transportation under one monthly subscription. In the study, engineering and design consultancy Ramboll analyzed data of 70 000 registered users based on Whim’s first operating year in Helsinki, Finland. Whimpact reveals results on how people use MaaS and how that compares to overall usage of transportation services in a particular city. The key findings are:

• ”Public transportation is the backbone of MaaS.”
• ”Whim users are steeped in multimodalism and use both bicycle and taxi to solve the last-mile problem.”
• ”Growth in MaaS usage has been strongest in the inner-city region.”

So, the first numbers are in and it looks like MaaS, when done right, does exactly what we expect it to do: it relies on mass transit (not automobiles), solves the last-mile problem (that automobiles used to solve) and is most popular in dense areas (where automobiles pose the biggest challenge).

Full study available at this link.

Dr. Johanna Tzanidaki, ERTICO’s Director of Innovation and Deployment introduced the concept of MaaS and ERTICO’s Urban Mobility strategy to ACARE’s (Advisory Council for Aviation Research and Innovation in Europe) Mobility Working Group on 20 March 2019.  The aim was to create synergies and to consider new ways that the aviation sector could be integrated into this new concept of urban mobility.

“MaaS can indeed improve the door-to-door journey planning of travellers including to and from the airport,” she said “and it is a pleasure to see ACARE’s working group members express such a strong interest in MaaS and ERTICO’s activities when it comes to seamless, urban and multimodal services”.

ACARE and ERTICO both expressed their interest in a future collaboration, as well as continuing the discussion on how MaaS and urban mobility solutions can be better integrated to air transport.

Full story available at this link.

The Maas4EU project was present at the 6th European Conference on Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs), held on 17th-18th June in Groningen, Netherlands.

A presentation on Maas4EU project has been delivered by Ms Melinda Matyas, Research Associate at the Energy Institute of the University College London (UCL), the latter being the Scientific and Technical Coordinator of the partnership. The title of the presentation was “Business models, enabling framework and evidence for European seamless mobility”. The power point is available at this link.

Mr Simone Bosetti of TRT Trasporti e Territorio also joined the plenary session and made atargeted intervention.

For more information about the 6th European Conference on SUMPs and all the presentations delivered, click here.