Mobility-as-a-service challenges and opportunities in the post-pandemic

Abstract

In December 2019, the world experienced a pandemic that called into question what we always took for granted, such as our freedom of movement. Tough restrictions imposed across the world were necessary to stem the transmission of the COVID-19 virus and have largely affected the mobility and transport sector. In a first phase, due to the mandatory confinement that forced people not to leave their houses; in a second phase, when the measures eased and people started to have the need to move again, it was necessary to look for alternative means of transport that avoided the gathering of people. In view of the advances that were being made in recent years towards a Mobility-as-a-Service paradigm that advocates multimodal and shared transport, the pandemic has raised many challenges. In this paper, a statistical analysis of the mobility data made available by Apple from January 2020 to March 2021 is presented, where the reduction in the use of public transport becomes evident, leading us to question what the future of Mobility-as-a-Service will be as its foundation advocates, among other aspects, the use of a shared transport model. Despite the challenges that the pandemic has brought to Mobility-asa-Service, a set of opportunities are presented that can be used in the short and medium term to strengthen the paradigm and enhance its massive adoption.