In 10 years in Quebec, will the preferred mode of transportation still be the car? Will we take the metro or the tramway? Will electric bicycles crush the scooters? It is difficult to decide since the answer varies depending on the situation: this is precisely where integrated mobility comes into play. We explain the concept to you.
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The “Mobility as a Service“, this is what?
Imagine that when you want to move, you open a mobile application and it does not just give you a route or allow you to order a mode of transport; it offers you all the possible options. You can find out about the different modes of transport available to you (bus, metro, self-service bicycle, car-sharing, lark), pay for your trip on your phone and access the vehicle with it.
photo-credit">Illustration Victor Garibay
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This is what the “Mobility as a Service”(MaaS), which invites us to conceive of travel as a service for which we pay rather than buying vehicles for ourselves to get around.
And an app helps to put all of that in order. “The multiplication of offers can create confusion among users,” says Antoine Sambin, sustainable mobility advisor for the Jalon organization, whose mission is to promote innovation to make mobility more sustainable. Just in Montreal, we have the STM, exo, Communauto, BIXI, Uber and taxis. MaaS therefore makes it possible to help users understand the offer and know what is the best solution according to their needs. ”
photo-credit">Illustration Victor Garibay
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Ideally, a functional and efficient MaaS offer integrates all these elements are in perfect harmony. In fact, it is a little more complicated and, above all, it does not happen overnight, explains Antoine Sambin.
“The whole challenge of MaaS is to bring together these mobility providers. There must be a concerted effort between the players and they must commit to working together, for example by sharing their data. ”
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The ultimate goal of MaaS is, of course, to fight against climate change, says Antoine Sambin. Road transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Montreal, accounting for 30% of the city’s total emissions. A study by the STM also reveals that each tonne of CO2 it emits allows 20 to be avoided in Montreal.
But it is also to make the city more pleasant for its residents and visitors. “Better mobility also makes it possible to fight against nuisances that are linked to the car, such as congestion and noise,” he adds.
Get rid of the “autosolo” model
The “autosolo” model, where a person or a family owns a private vehicle, is one of the problems that MaaS is tackling. However, there is a challenge: we have to convince motorists.
photo-credit">Illustration Victor Garibay
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“The offer must be so attractive that the user chooses not to use his car for the benefit of public or active transport. We should not get them out of their car immediately, but we can remind them that other transport solutions can save them time or money, ”notes Antoine Sambin.
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A MaaS application must therefore also have automobile-related components, such as information on parking and its cost, or else integrate strategies related to infrastructure, for example reserved lanes for carpooling to put an end to the autosolo.
Autonomous vehicles as a solution
Experts believe that autonomous (driverless) vehicles will play a central role in MaaS services. Indeed, many believe that they present the ideal opportunity to establish an autonomous shuttle or carpooling service.
photo-credit">Illustration Victor Garibay
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Even if their arrival on the roads of Quebec is still distant, the authorities should think upstream of the role that autonomous vehicles will play in transport to prevent history from repeating itself, warns Antoine Sambin.
“It’s really a social choice. We must avoid moving towards a model that would replace normal cars by autonomous vehicles. Otherwise we would find ourselves in a completely insane scenario where the autonomous car is creating twice as much congestion as the current situation ”, he illustrates.
Montreal on the way to MaaS
A MaaS offer already exists in Montreal and is gradually taking root in the city through applications such as Chrono and Transit. The latter, founded here in 2012, allows in particular to know the timetables of public transport in real time, to visualize the ridership of a bus – a novelty added since the beginning of the pandemic -, to plan an itinerary according to different modes of transport, or buy a BIXI pass. One in five STM users uses the app.
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“We have all the ingredients – a good public transport system, a car-sharing network that aims to be a North American leader, a self-service bicycle offer – so that integrated mobility becomes a reality”, confirms Sam Vermette, Chief Executive Officer of Transit.
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But to get there, there is still work to be done in terms of pricing and payment in the Montreal market, he says. “Someone is needed to oversee the integration of the various services and to unify pricing so that everything is transparent for the user. For that, it is necessary that all the systems which are currently independent of each other communicate with each other and that the actors of mobility work in this direction. ”
The company is also hard at work integrating these elements thanks to a pilot project it is currently carrying out with the Agence régionale de transport métropolitain (ARTM). This allows users to buy and validate tickets directly from the application. Since September 2020, 175,000 tickets have been purchased directly in Transit.
And that’s how, “pilot project by pilot project”, Montreal will eventually have a truly complete and effective MaaS offering, believes Sam Vermette.
“We may do it less with great fanfare since it is being done gradually, but, in the end, we will arrive with an integrated mobility offer that will really get people out of their cars,” he concludes.
photo-credit">Illustration Victor Garibay
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L’application Whim, a European example
Many cities have adopted the Mobility as a Service, starting with Helsinki, the capital of Finland, a true precursor of the movement. Since 2016, its residents have had at their disposal a mobile application called Whim, which brings together all public and active transport services.
photo-credit">Photo Facebook
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“The aim is to make travel so convenient for users that they choose to abandon their personal vehicle to go to town, not because they have to, but because the alternative is more attractive” , underlines the firm Deloitte in a report on the MaaS.
With the tip of their finger, Helsinkers can plan their journey and pay for each of the services they will use directly in the app. A user also has the option of paying for a single trip or subscribing to one of the monthly plans. For example, 62.70 euros ($ 92.03 CAD) gives unlimited access for 30 days to public transport and taxi trips of 3 kilometers or 10 minutes.
The Whim app is now available in several European cities including Turku, Finland, Vienna, Austria, West Midlands County, England, as well as Belgium and Switzerland.
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