Making all types of public and private transport services available to users through a single and integrated digital platform is the new urban mobility paradigm called Mobility as a Service (MaaS). This scheme allows both a more sustainable urban transportation system and a more efficient transport service for users. For MaaS to be successful, its implementation should adapt to the specific features of the location covered by the service. The city maturity level has to be considered in terms of multimodality, infrastructures, regulations, user goals, and user willingness to use and pay for MaaS services. This paper discusses and analyses the results of a survey on MaaS conducted in three Italian metropolitan areas: Turin, Rome, and Genoa, which have very different and specific characteristics. The comparative analysis enables the definition of drivers, obstacles, and requisites for MaaS implementation to be successful. When it comes to cities with conservative mobility policies or cities that are new to MaaS experiences, resistance to adoption of the service might occur. The results of the research discussed in this paper can be a useful resource to enable decision makers to develop more effective and efficient transportation policies.
10 December 2024 in Case Studies on Transport Policy
Mobility as a service (MaaS) is a promising lever to achieve a more sustainable, co-modal, and flexible urban system for daily mobility. MaaS is crucial to addressing the challenges imposed by hyper-urbanization, social changes, saturation of public soil with private motor vehicles, and local and global environmental issues. The aim of this paper is to analyse important characteristics of MaaS, namely public governance, regional scale, and high level of development. A total of 13 MaaS initiatives implemented in some European cities were compared using multi-criteria analysis. The results show that, although the MaaS implementation process is faster for private initiatives, public governance is shown to be the most appropriate entity to develop stable MaaS services, as it can enable the achievement of a higher level of integration, coupled with a high rate of service adoption, as well as reduce market entry barriers for service providers while also guaranteeing fair competition, and consequently fostering a higher level of service provided to users. The regional coverage of MaaS is crucial to ensure service provision to a wider population, living in both metropolitan and rural areas. These important features are included in the BIPforMaaS project run by the Italian region of Piedmont, described in detail in this paper.
Truck platooning refers to a group of heavy-duty vehicles travelling in close succession through cooperative driving technologies and inter-vehicle communication. This transport solution is increasingly investigated as a promising strategy to enhance the efficiency and sustainability of road freight transport. The expected benefits include fuel and operational cost savings, reduced emissions, improved traffic flow and congestion mitigation, as well as enhanced safety for both platoon drivers and surrounding traffic. This paper presents a literature review of truck platooning, with a specific focus on the expected benefits and on how they are addressed across two fundamental perspectives: planning and control. Planning encompasses issues related to platoon formation, maintenance and reconfiguration during transport operations, whereas control focuses on the methods and schemes used to coordinate vehicle behaviour within and between platoons. The reviewed contributions are further analysed according to the methodology adopted, the level of vehicle automation, and the specific control approaches implemented. The resulting classification provides an integrated view of how different research streams contribute to economic, environmental, safety and social benefits. Finally, the current gaps and promising research directions are outlined to support future developments in large-scale platooning deployment.