When it comes to launching a MaaS platform, time is usually of the essence. Due to the sheer amount of other actors involved, building a new network is simply not a project you’ll want to drag out indefinitely. You have a growing need for a MaaS network that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. That’s why it’s helpful to plan in stages, and specifically to include those stages in your tender outline before sending it out for bids.
It’s worth being specific on this: we’re talking about the technical stages of launching your MaaS network, not pre- and post-launch to-do’s like user research and promotional campaigns.
Generally speaking, there are four main technical stages to launching a MaaS network.
Sounds complicated, but what we really mean by “gathering your data” is collecting and analyzing the public transport data your existing transportation system is already generating on a daily basis. This data can then be processed and prepared with a data management platform.
A journey planner is the bread and butter of any mobility-as-a-service app. A well-designed journey planner will cover and be able to compare trips taken on public transport, bikes, kick-scooters, taxis, car sharing and an often-overlooked category: walking. Your journey planner should be built with a routing engine that adjusts routes according to real-time traffic conditions and can even adapt to cultural needs – for example, in some countries, people don’t mind walking longer distances to reach a station.
Exactly what it sounds like: get your MSPs on-board as soon as your multimodal journey planner has been integrated. Start with your “essential” MSPs first – the ones already being used in your city – and concentrate on their core services. At the same time, you should be integrating your payment and SSO providers in preparation for the final stage:
A finely tuned journey planner and a long list of freshly integrated MSPs mean nothing if your users can’t access them through your brand-new, all-in-one MaaS app. Don’t underestimate this stage: as soon as a user decides the app interface is hard to use, confusingly designed or just plain ugly, they’re likely to stop using the app and your new platform and never look back. Always try to focus on your users, rather than getting too “caught up” in the technical side of your MaaS solution.
As a city, you’re best positioned to understand what your users really need, and there’s no harm in leaving the technical expertise to your tech provider. Launching a MaaS network is a group effort, after all, and each stakeholder has a uniquely different role to play. If you plan in stages, and include those stages in your tender, you’ll be in a good position to effectively collaborate with the other stakeholders who are helping you build your network.
For more information on how we help cities launch and grow mobility networks, get in touch or check out our webpage.
Daniel Reck is a researcher at ETH Zurich. His work aims to advance our understanding of emerging transport modes (shared e-scooters and e-bikes, carsharing and ridehailing) and their integration with public transport (Mobility-as-a-Service, mobility hubs) to inform policymaking that creates more efficient, sustainable and equitable cities.
As part of our Trafi Talks series, we sat down with Daniel to talk about three topics he’s explored at length throughout his career (and taken from the publication he co-authored, MaaS Bundle Design):
Let’s jump right into it!
D: That depends on how you define success. Success could mean a behavioral shift towards more sustainable transport modes, but it could also mean commercial success. Identifying what success means in your organization and then following a goal-oriented bundle design process is probably the most crucial part of mobility bundle design. In my experience, a very simple truth holds for mobility bundle design: input is strongly related to output. For example, if you include lots of free e-scooter minutes in our bundle, you will incentivize lots of e-scooter usage. In turn, if you include subsidized public transport season tickets in your bundle, you will incentivize public transport use. Simplicity is also key to attracting and retaining customers.
“A very simple truth holds for mobility bundle design: input is strongly related to output.“
In our recent paper on MaaS bundle design, we synthesize 10 design dimensions for mobility bundles to assist researchers and practitioners in designing future trials and products. These design dimensions include, for example, which transport modes to include, which metrics to employ to measure consumption and budgets, the type and granularity of discounts, and further details such as subscription cycle lengths and roll-over options. We describe each design dimension in detail with practical examples from the case studies we have worked on, and further review the scope and gaps in the academic literature on the topic.
D: This is simple: if MaaS provides added value to users, willingness to pay will follow. How can MaaS provide added value? First, simplify their lives: one app for intermodal trip planning, booking and payment, instead of many. The Trafi-powered implementations in Switzerland (Yumuv) and Berlin (Jelbi) are great examples here: users can plan, book and pay for a trip with several different modes all in one app.
Second, financial incentives: MaaS bundles can offer discounts. One example are the Yumuv bundles in Switzerland. There, bundle users pay no unlocking fee for shared mobility services. This is valuable and users are likely to be willing to pay for it. Maximizing willingness to pay is complex, though, as demand for mobility is highly individual. Our studies in Switzerland have shown that including additional services can sometimes even decrease willingness to pay if users see no added value but have the feeling that they pay for it.
D: First, let’s clarify that shared mobility is not always good, and shouldn’t be a goal in itself. Research has shown that life-cycle CO2 emissions of shared micromobility services, for example, are worse than those of personal e-scooters and e-bikes due to lower lifetime expectancies and operational services (rebalancing, recharging).
“Efficient public transport systems will always be the backbone of sustainable urban transport.“
I think a lot of people want to travel more sustainably, they just need the right tools to do so. Intermodal MaaS apps can be of great use here. Reliable, efficient public transport systems will always be the backbone of sustainable urban transport. However, we also need more awareness of the true costs of private car rides. In Switzerland, for example, TCS (Touring Club Suisse) calculated that fuel costs only make up 15% of the total costs per kilometer of private car rides. When comparing the car with other transport modes, many just consider fuel costs. This is obviously a skewed comparison that calls for correction.
Finally, employers have an important role to play. In Germany, for example, many employers provide their employees with company cars. What if, for example, they would provide their employees with MaaS bundles that include public transport season tickets instead?
D: In my view, five defining characteristics of functional mobility ecosystems are accessibility, efficiency, equity, sustainability and safety.
First, transport is about providing accessibility. In a perfectly functional mobility ecosystem, accessibility should be high, and it should be high not only for some, but for all.
Second, efficiency relates to how much space an average person needs to move from A to B, and how much transport is required overall. In this aspect, many cities, and cars in cities, are terribly inefficient. Micromobility and public transport are already much better. Increasing efficiency means decreasing the space required for transport. In today’s cities (and much more so in future cities), we are running out of space so we need to increase their efficiency. One way to do so in transport is reducing the number of cars. Did you know that in some cities, 20-30% of the total space is occupied by streets and parking spots?
“We need to ensure that those with few alternatives don’t get left behind.“
Third, equity in transport relates to situations when certain social groups benefit more from public investments than others. For example, higher income groups travel more regularly in airplanes and long-distance trains and thus over-proportionately benefit from investments in airports and long-distance train networks. With so many new mobility services entering our cities these days (e.g., shared e-scooters and bikes, carsharing and ridesourcing), we need to ensure that those with few alternatives also benefit from increasing accessibility and don’t get left behind.
Fourth, sustainability relates to total life-cycle emissions of the mobility ecosystem, which we should naturally aim to reduce. This includes CO2 emissions but also other emissions such as noise. And last but not least, safety is another very important characteristic of functional mobility ecosystems.
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For further reading, you can find Daniel Reck’s papers on Mobility-as-a-Service and shared mobility on his personal website: research.daniel-reck.de
To find out more about how Trafi’s services are encouraging the shift to MaaS, check out our website or get in touch.
As public life starts to move into the post-COVID-19 phase, the question remains how urban mobility will adapt to this “new normal.” From today’s perspective on the weeks and months behind us, the trajectory for the future becomes clearer.
The urban mobility ecosystem adapted quickly and flexibly to changing customer demands. This ability to match the overall supply of mobility modes with individual preferences on the demand side will be a key success factor for cities from now on. The modal split will look different in a post-COVID-19 world and will be even more fast-moving.
In this paper, we use the example of Berlin to compare the direct implications of the pandemic on urban mobility behavior, especially the relative use of different modes of transportation before and during the lockdown phase). Moreover, we will analyze the indirect consequences of a changed mobility behavior such as changes in air quality and in the parking situation. We present four different scenarios analyzing in which direction future mobility might shift.
Our findings are backed by data from the public transportation provider in Berlin (BVG), Mobility as a Service platform provider Trafi, as well as mobility analytics companies MotionTag and Bliq.
Founded in Vilnius, Lithuania, Trafi has been revolutionizing urban mobility since 2013. Our MaaS platform is designed to run even the most complex transport systems and has been trusted by Berlin (BVG), Brussels (STIB), Portsmouth & Southampton (Solent Transport), Munich (MVG), and Zurich (SBB).
Trafi’s mission is to empower cities with state-of-the-art MaaS solution that helps to tackle their mobility challenges and to achieve ambitious sustainability objectives. Our white-label product offers all the features and components needed to launch your own-branded MaaS service. With more than 50 existing deep integrations to mobility service providers and payment facilitators, we help to reduce risk, cost, and time-to-launch for new services.
ZURICH, BASEL, BERN, VILNIUS – Today, Trafi, the European leader for MaaS platforms, in collaboration with Verkehrsbetriebe Zürich, Basler Verkehrs-Betriebe BVB, Bernmobil, and SBB CFF FFS, is launching the first regional and multi-city MaaS app. It is called “yumuv”.
Our new single payment model for Yumuv represents a new standard in MaaS technology. It allows users to split their subscription allowance among different operators. Such a mechanism will ensure a cheaper and smoother exploration of new mobility options for travelers.
Martynas Gudonavičius, Trafi CEO & Co-Founder
Trafi’s mission is to empower sustainable urban mobility in Switzerland by bringing all existing urban mobility options together with one app, one account, and one payment system providing unprecedented convenience and connectivity to the user. Such an evolution is made possible by Trafi’s technology, which solves the challenge of multi-choices mobility options and previously-incompatible price models to offer a unified experience to the users.
Founded in Vilnius, Lithuania, Trafi has been revolutionizing urban mobility since 2013. Our MaaS platform is designed to run even the most complex transport systems and has been trusted by Berlin (BVG), Brussels (STIB), Portsmouth & Southampton (Solent Transport), Munich (MVG), and Zurich (SBB).
Trafi’s mission is to empower cities with state-of-the-art MaaS solution that helps to tackle their mobility challenges and to achieve ambitious sustainability objectives. Our white-label product offers all the features and components needed to launch your own-branded MaaS service. With more than 50 existing deep integrations to mobility service providers and payment facilitators, we help to reduce risk, cost, and time-to-launch for new services.
When we launched Jelbi in Berlin last year we were faced with a challenge to handle radically different mobility services within a single European city. Now we can say with certainty that it was a huge achievement not only for all of us at Trafi but for the mobility industry as a whole. Nevertheless, the only way for us to top it was to take on an even more complex, multi-city mobility network and make it even better. This week we are presenting you with yumuv – world’s first regional Mobility as a Service with subscriptions. Owned by Swiss Federal Railways (SBB CFF FFS), public transport operators (PTOs) in Zurich (VBZ), Basel (BVB), and Bern (BERNMOBIL), and powered by Trafi.
Of all countries embracing public transportation as the backbone of urban mobility, Switzerland stands second to none. From their synchronized scheduling of all forms of public transportation to their unified ticketing system, this mountain nation is an example where even the most affluent people rely on public transportation every single day. Thus, when we took the task of launching yumuv, we didn’t flinch in basing the whole product experience in public transportation. It only makes sense when you have such a firm ground to stand on.
However, using public transportation to move between Zurich, Basel, and Bern is not the same as relying on shared mobility inside the cities. Our lives are too chaotic to expect public transportation to cover all our use cases. Nevertheless, instead of falling back to owning private cars, the younger generation is getting their driver’s licenses later, if at all. According to one study done in Geneva, the home to the world-famous auto show, driver’s licenses issued to people under 25 years went from 75% 18 years ago to 65% in 2017. It shows a trend that younger Swiss citizens want to incorporate shared mobility services into their daily lives. For us, this was a clear confirmation that we had to completely integrate well-known micromobility brands like Tier, Voi, and BOND into a single, holistic multimodal service.
So, the takeaway here: no single provider, operator, or solution could have made all of this happen. Moreover, it would be impossible to have a successful Mobility as a Service without taking the already excellent public transportation backbone and enhancing it with trusted mobility service providers (MSPs). And for a project like yumuv to work at all, you have to have a single joint regional entity to orchestrate Mobility as a Service for and between three Swiss cities.
A multi-city approach
For a country the size of Switzerland, where you usually commute to work, school or university from another city or village, can reach your downtown in mere minutes and have immediate access to the Alps, we chose a different focal point: a completely regional, multi-city experience is more important than integrating complete intracity mobility of just one city.
Micromobility supplements public transportation
We still hear hypotheticals how micromobility should complement public transportation. Meanwhile, yumuv is pushing the envelope from day one and connects these modes seamlessly: there can be no first and last-mile solutions, if electric bikes and kick scooters are not readily available in the same place you plan your public transportation trips, and vice versa.
Mobility subscriptions
Most Swiss citizens have public transportation passes, and this suggested that extending them with mobility subscriptions for micromobility was the natural way to go. With yumuv, people can pay a flat rate for rides with electric bikes and kick scooters. This mechanism ensures that they can have a cheaper and smoother exploration of new mobility options.
Taking data privacy seriously
With yumuv, we also follow our own principle of personal data privacy being a human right. There is no better way to deliver on this deeply held conviction than to create a product that is fully functional even if travelers don’t want to share their location data either with our platform, or our partners. Certain features become less helpful but people can still effortlessly look for options that make the most sense for their situation.
Customizable off-the-shelf solution
Finally, for us at Trafi it’s very special that yumuv is sharing the same robust technology we use to power Jelbi and our other MaaS cities. Of course, we had to adjust and customize for Swiss regional specifics. However, our core functionality remains intact and is shared across other Mobility as a Service solutions, allowing for easier rollouts of upcoming features.
In other words, with yumuv, Mobility as a Service is entering its Act II. The launch of a completely integrated holistic multimodal service for a single city was exciting, but it was only the setup. Now, focusing on a multi-city regional approach and creating a single payment option like subscriptions opens new, yet to-be-explored avenues.
Founded in Vilnius, Lithuania, Trafi has been revolutionizing urban mobility since 2013. Our MaaS platform is designed to run even the most complex transport systems and has been trusted by Berlin (BVG), Brussels (STIB), Portsmouth & Southampton (Solent Transport), Munich (MVG), and Zurich (SBB).
Trafi’s mission is to empower cities with state-of-the-art MaaS solution that helps to tackle their mobility challenges and to achieve ambitious sustainability objectives. Our white-label product offers all the features and components needed to launch your own-branded MaaS service. With more than 50 existing deep integrations to mobility service providers and payment facilitators, we help to reduce risk, cost, and time-to-launch for new services.
VILNIUS – Leader in Mobility as a Service, Trafi announces a fundraise with new investors Sumitomo Corporation and Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance and follow-on from EBRD and Octopus Investments. The investment will accelerate Trafi’s strategy to bring innovative mobility solutions to cities worldwide, and to Asia in particular.
Sumitomo Corporation and Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance are the lead investors in Trafi’s recent round, opening the next company phase: more MaaS solution access to more people.
“We are proud to see the cutting edge technology that Trafi has deployed in major cities,” said Shingo Hosotani, General Manager of Business Development at Sumitomo Corporation Europe. “We intend to be the global leader in optimizing mobility of people and goods. Thus we had no second thoughts when we decided to rely on Trafi’s expertise. We now wish to help people anywhere to adopt sustainable and next-generation mobility services.”
In 2019, Trafi launched Jelbi, the world’s most comprehensive MaaS in Berlin, showing that city-led mobility solutions can offer all modes of transportation to Berliners in a single place for a more sustainable, equitable, and effective urban mobility. Following the success in Germany, Czech Republic, and Lithuania, Trafi will soon launch its MaaS platform in collaboration with SBB — the Swiss national railway company, and then intends to conquer more European and international capitals for 2021.
“The broad business perspective is the reason why we are so eager to partner up with Trafi,” says Hisashige Doisaki, General Manager at Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance. “The company does have a real success story of MaaS — from cities in Europe to trendsetting multinational technology companies, like Google, Lyft, and Gojek. We believe that by working closer together, we can help cities make this transition from personal cars into a safer, more equitable, and sustainable future of mobility.”
“Our partnership with Sumitomo Corporation and Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance enables us at Trafi not only to accelerate the development of the technology that we already know, but also to open up our own MaaS platform to a much broader spectrum of urban mobility initiatives, projects, and experiments. No matter the size or scale,” says Martynas Gudonavičius, CEO of Trafi.
The company believes that cities have been suffering enough from car centricity, and the Covid-19 gave local authorities the final proof that public investment into transportation and urban mobility is needed. With this new financial round and the Japanese expertise, Trafi bets on a more sustainable and easier to access urban mobility solutions for the future of the cities.
With its global network and based on trust from companies in various industries and from consumers, Sumitomo Corporation engages in multifaceted business activities by making the most of its Integrated Corporate Strength. These business activities include sales of a variety of products and services within Japan, import and export, trilateral trade, and domestic and international business investment.
Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance Co., Ltd. is a subsidiary of MS&AD insurance Group, the largest insurer in Japan and the ASEAN region. Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance offers a comprehensive insurance service package: from fire insurance, casualty insurance, automobile insurance, allied insurance, to life insurance, and other products. Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance provides its services to individuals and groups domestically and overseas.
Founded in Vilnius, Lithuania, Trafi has been revolutionizing urban mobility since 2013. Our MaaS platform is designed to run even the most complex transport systems and has been trusted by Berlin (BVG), Brussels (STIB), Portsmouth & Southampton (Solent Transport), Munich (MVG), and Zurich (SBB).
Trafi’s mission is to empower cities with state-of-the-art MaaS solution that helps to tackle their mobility challenges and to achieve ambitious sustainability objectives. Our white-label product offers all the features and components needed to launch your own-branded MaaS service. With more than 50 existing deep integrations to mobility service providers and payment facilitators, we help to reduce risk, cost, and time-to-launch for new services.
Intermodal trips look like a saving grace in getting people out of their cars. Aurelija Petrauskytė-Latakė — Trafi’s Lead Product Manager for Routing — dispels the complex nature of intermodality and explains why people find it challenging to rely upon it.
Imagine that you are having coffee with a friend near Potsdamer Platz in Berlin on a lovely Saturday morning. Your friend gets an idea to visit the Zoo, and you don’t hesitate to agree. Now, if you were Anna, a Berliner through-and-through, you would walk. It’s 46 minutes, a beautiful route, and she enjoys a pleasant stroll while catching up on her podcasts. However, if you were Peter, an ex-pat, you would prefer convenience while being very price sensitive. In other words, you would take a bus. Would getting caught in the rain change anything? Anna most likely would immediately jump into a shared car and go back home. For Peter, however, nothing would change: it’s price over comfort pretty much always, and it’s charming when it rains.
These are typical mobility deliberations we all make every single day. What we are considering — taking a bus, car, or walking — are routes from point A to point B. Every route has an origin, a destination, a mobility mode, a path, and a cost. Anna doesn’t mind the physical cost of walking because she finds standing on a platform or inside a train annoying. Peter, however, is willing to pay for the convenience of public transport above the physical toll of walking. You, however, would likely have a different attitude. We all are different people with distinct preferences in disparate situations.
The takeaway: no route is absolutely right for everyone. Every option we take is a tradeoff against the existing alternatives.
Say that Anna, Peter, and you are relying on the same trip planner to find your mobility options. Well, then the routing software that powers any trip planner would have to know, accept, and adhere to your differences and return a set of mobility options that would make sense specifically to you and your situation. Honestly, every trip planner faces a challenge to achieve that.
There is a solution, though: every one of us, including Anna, Peter and you, consider wait time, trip price, duration, distance, etc. What makes us all different are the distinct values we assign to shared preferences: Anna is more tolerant of walking, and Peter is more tolerant of public transport. I, for example, maybe am more tolerant of paying for ride-hailing. Keep in mind that these tolerance levels also are sensitive to context: whether it’s raining or if it’s rush hour, whether you’re carrying grocery bags or just running late — we all tend to reconsider our usual choices if the situation changes. Routing software would have to start exactly here: by embedding this shared set of preferences and assigning tolerance levels specific to people, cities, and even context.
In other words, trip planners have to consider our shared preferences and return a list of routes that make sense to our tolerance levels in any given situation.
Anna and Peter’s options look like a walk in the park in comparison with intermodal routes, e.g., combining a shared mobility option with a public transport one. Imagine that for that trip to Berlin’s Zoo; you decide to take the intermodal route recommended by your trip planner: a TIER kick scooter with a transfer to U-Bahn №2.
What follows is the actual sequence of actions you would be required to perform in an intermodal trip. First, your find a scooter, walk to the scooter, unlock the scooter, put on a helmet, ride the scooter from Potsdamer Platz to Mendelssohn-Bartholdy-Park station for 5 minutes, confirm that you can lock the scooter, take off the helmet, lock the scooter, enter the station and find the platform, wait 6 minutes, transfer to U-Bahn №2, ride five stops for ten more minutes, and complete your last mile on foot.
That’s 23 minutes and around 5 euros. Slower than car-sharing or even a bus but, probably, more convenient than walking. But for this trip to even be recommended, a trip planner has to perform some severe behind-the-scenes calculations:
1. Evaluate the amount of effort you are willing to invest in this route, i.e., tolerance limit to walking, tolerance limit to driving yourself, tolerance to switch from a self-driven mode to a mode where you are driven, tolerance to wait for a transfer, etc.
2. Evaluate mobility service availability, i.e., inquire all integrated shared and public mobility providers in real-time about their available supply, so that you would be able to unlock a kick scooter to start the trip, and a transfer to U-Bahn at your connection point without the necessity to wait for a long time,
3. Predict upfront, i.e., combining the availability and your tolerance levels, calculate how far into the future this trip can be guaranteed, as the scooter supply changes constantly, they cannot be reserved indefinitely. At the same time, U-Bahn №2 does run on a schedule, but it does get disrupted sometimes, and you still have to make your connection at a specific time.
In other words, a trip planner has to recommend intermodal routes that make sense: provide options that show a tradeoff between price, the effort needed, and time saved. But even then, one person will find paying 5 euros for a 23-minute trip outrageous while another would be less concerned about price. Moreover, people are also less likely to consider taking intermodal routes where they are not guaranteed supply at transfer stations.
One of the points that tend to get lost in the whole debate about the future of urban mobility is the cognitive complexity of intermodal routes. As we’ve discussed before, people calculate tradeoffs. Risks of not finding a kick scooter, riding on unknown streets amid the car traffic, the possibility of missing your U-Bahn connection — it all adds up to an apparent reason why Anna and Peter will mostly prefer sticking to their regularly scheduled options in the upcoming future.
Nevertheless, for most people, sticking only to scarce public transport or private cars is not an answer either. We must increase the connectivity of the whole urban mobility network. Intermodal trips seem to be a legitimate way to get there. One immediate example is urban park & ride systems that allow commuters to leave their cars and switch to public transport or micro-mobility.
To put a finer point here: intermodal routes are already being suggested. In Berlin, Jelbi — a city-led MaaS platform — recommends taking at least one shared mobility combination with public transport in every tenth route search request. However, guaranteeing intermodality is still very complex: these routes have to deal with far more variables than distinctly public transport or shared mobility ones.
One can only hope that intermodal variability can be handled by an abundance of micro-mobility supply soon. Until then, it’s only natural that for regular people, intermodality is rarely the preferred option.
Founded in Vilnius, Lithuania, Trafi has been revolutionizing urban mobility since 2013. Our MaaS platform is designed to run even the most complex transport systems and has been trusted by Berlin (BVG), Brussels (STIB), Portsmouth & Southampton (Solent Transport), Munich (MVG), and Zurich (SBB).
Trafi’s mission is to empower cities with state-of-the-art MaaS solution that helps to tackle their mobility challenges and to achieve ambitious sustainability objectives. Our white-label product offers all the features and components needed to launch your own-branded MaaS service. With more than 50 existing deep integrations to mobility service providers and payment facilitators, we help to reduce risk, cost, and time-to-launch for new services.
Navigating cities has become an extremely complicated task. MaaS promises to guide travelers effortlessly through the so-called jungle of the urban mobility network. One of the severe challenges that stands in the way of living up to this promise is disruptions, which happen on a daily basis, especially in larger cities. The majority of urban dwellers can relate to being extremely frustrated by being late to work because of a disrupted line. In these situations, what travelers need the most are guidance and reassurance.
At Trafi, we took this challenge very seriously — to provide top-notch real-time disruption updates, to allow travelers to plan their door-to-door trips effortlessly even when disruptions occur. Firstly, we analyzed the currently available disruption services on the market and identified multiple problems, and then attempted to tackle them.
Based on these observations, we designed a solution to tackle these problems heads on.
Types of alerts sent to travelers:
The most granular disturbances on a direction and stop level for planned and unplanned disruptions.
Planned disruption information comes from the official Public Transport Authority (PTA) sources that we receive through API. Trafi’s system sends automatic updates every 5 minutes, checking for the newest information from the PTA source. E.g. canceled bus line, change of route length, etc. Our system indicates not only that there is a disruption per route level, but also indicated it for a particular disrupted direction (track) for each schedule, meaning that users who are traveling in another direction on the same affected route are not bothered or misled by redundant information.
Unplanned disruption updates are derived from real-time mobility situations. Let’s say that there is a major congestion due to a huge storm. As a result, four busses are stuck and have not been able to move for the past 35 minutes. Thanks to real-time vehicle tracking, Trafi will spot this and immediately send a disruption alert.
For example, Berliners are warned about all service disruptions in one place -the BVG Jelbi app-, including U-Bahn, BVG buses, BVG trams, and S-Bahn disruptions, which cover 95% of the total annual public transport passenger traffic. And soon we will reach 100 % of trip coverage.
Trafi prepared a toolset for cities to publish disruptions manually to cover all possible cases.
Official sources do not always provide all the disruption information and sometimes it requires adding them manually. The lockdown situation during COVID-19 proved that changes for public transport were made quicker than updates were available in official sources. E.g. information such as front bus doors won’t be used to enter a bus anymore, or that it is required to wear a mask if a passenger wants to enter the vehicle were not part of official disruptions but yet highly important for people to know.
Our proprietary tool allows MaaS operators to manually post disruption information: not only by writing a message but also marking what lines, schedules, directions, or stops were affected and how.
The disruption function is now live in the BVG Jelbi app powered by Trafi. The ability to provide the most accurate and granular public transport disruption information sets Trafi apart. But we do not stop here, we strive for the best support of the travelers, thus next we are working on:
– Informing users on the way. E.g. if a traveler is on the way and disruption happens that affects their journey, they will be informed.
– Supporting replanning of the trip to navigate around disruptions. In addition to suggesting another public transport route, we plan to help people discover other modes, and intermodal routes to reach their destination on time.
Founded in Vilnius, Lithuania, Trafi has been revolutionizing urban mobility since 2013. Our MaaS platform is designed to run even the most complex transport systems and has been trusted by Berlin (BVG), Brussels (STIB), Portsmouth & Southampton (Solent Transport), Munich (MVG), and Zurich (SBB).
Trafi’s mission is to empower cities with state-of-the-art MaaS solution that helps to tackle their mobility challenges and to achieve ambitious sustainability objectives. Our white-label product offers all the features and components needed to launch your own-branded MaaS service. With more than 50 existing deep integrations to mobility service providers and payment facilitators, we help to reduce risk, cost, and time-to-launch for new services.
Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG) is Berlin’s public transport authority. It makes sure that Berliners are on the move — they manage the city’s U-Bahn, tram, bus, replacement services (Ersatzverkehr, EV), and ferry networks. BVG responds flexibly to the requirements of a city in which around 3.4 million people live and which is continually changing. Network density, clock frequency, and operating times are at a very high level, making Berlin’s local transport one of the most complex networks to organize in the world. BVG is an attractive and environmentally friendly alternative to individual transport and part of a flexible transport concept.
At the heart of BVG’s smart mobility strategy, #Berlinsteigtum is an initiative that connects the whole shared mobility offer in Berlin into a single marketplace to provide an attractive alternative to private car usage to all residents.
“With Jelbi, we want to help shape the future of mobility in Berlin by bringing all the pieces of the mobility puzzle together and giving the users an attractive alternative to private car usage. Our solution based on Trafi’s technology platform integrates into one app not only public transport but also all other forms of shared mobility in the city. The people of Berlin can now seamlessly plan, book, and pay on-demand for all their transportation needs with one single app and account.”
Jakob Michael Heider, Head of Jelbi at BVG.
BVG understood that creating such a product from scratch would require a lot of human capital and time. But there was no time to spare. The Public Transport authority, therefore, decided to look for a solution. Thus BVG and Trafi, one of the MaaS solution leaders, started talking to each other. From these conversations, Jelbi was born.
Learn more about the roadmap for Mobility as a Service.
BVG Jelbi was launched in just six months and built on Trafi MaaS Suite. Trafi provided not only a plug and play white label solution that was customized to BVG’s branding, but also a sophisticated MaaS API (backend) system to power it.
BVG Jelbi integrates all public transport and shared mobility options into a one-stop-shop for Berliners to find, plan, book, and pay for all their trips. It covers all rider’s needs such as assistance planning and routes discovery, real-time public transport information and shared mobility vehicle location & availability, a streamlined payment solution for any integrated mobility service, as well as the possibility to compare the duration & cost of each trip.
BVG is responsible for talking to mobility service providers (MSPs) and handling contracts with them. From the start, BVG was strong-minded and aimed only for deep level integrations with MSPs. It means allowing users to access and pay for their services directly through the BVG Jelbi app.
Trafi handles all the integrations and makes sure that they work flawlessly. Trafi’s MaaS Suite upholds all the integrations and communication between the MSP systems. The payments for MSP services booked through Jelbi are managed directly through the integrated Payment Service Provider (PSP). The PSP charges money from users and directly transfers it to the MSPs, ensuring a quick and direct payment to each provider. Neither Trafi nor the BVG plays any role in the payment process.
Trafi has integrated BVG tickets into the BVG Jelbi app, thus ensuring that Berliners can follow the familiar process of ticket purchase. The digital ticket incorporates a QR code that is easily scannable and recognizable. Trafi also incorporated animated security features into the ticket, indicating that the ticket is active in order to prevent fraud.
Trafi’s MaaS Suite does the heavy lifting for all integrations such as payments, ticketing systems, user documents, driver licenses, and phone validations, amongst others. Its proprietary routing algorithms also provide unimodal and intermodal trip suggestions. Static and real-time data is captured and enhanced to guarantee the most accurate ETAs and route suggestions.
“When BVG started to look for a trusted partner to launch a Mobility-as-a-Service solution in Berlin, we were mostly looking for speed, agility, and top-notch customer experience. These are exactly the things that Trafi offered us. As an independent start-up, Trafi brought us the possibility to integrate all partners in record time. And even more importantly, we share the same vision: letting cities orchestrate their mobility networks to drive the push from private to shared mobility.”
Jakob Michael Heider, Head of Jelbi at BVG
Founded in Vilnius, Lithuania, Trafi has been revolutionizing urban mobility since 2013. Our MaaS platform is designed to run even the most complex transport systems and has been trusted by Berlin (BVG), Brussels (STIB), Portsmouth & Southampton (Solent Transport), Munich (MVG), and Zurich (SBB).
Trafi’s mission is to empower cities with state-of-the-art MaaS solution that helps to tackle their mobility challenges and to achieve ambitious sustainability objectives. Our white-label product offers all the features and components needed to launch your own-branded MaaS service. With more than 50 existing deep integrations to mobility service providers and payment facilitators, we help to reduce risk, cost, and time-to-launch for new services.
Imagine that instead of owning the key that unlocks your personal car, you are handed a personal key to any given vehicle. This is where the promise of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) lies — a seamless access point to the complete mobility spectrum.
MaaS is not just a novel and convenient way for travelers to move within and beyond cities. It’s also the most promising alternative to the private cars which cities seek to push out.
The concept of MaaS also carries a lot of misconceptions. In this white paper, we aim to dispel the fog with what we call the Mobility as a Service fundamentals that are the key to unjamming urban mobility.
Founded in Vilnius, Lithuania, Trafi has been revolutionizing urban mobility since 2013. Our MaaS platform is designed to run even the most complex transport systems and has been trusted by Berlin (BVG), Brussels (STIB), Portsmouth & Southampton (Solent Transport), Munich (MVG), and Zurich (SBB).
Trafi’s mission is to empower cities with state-of-the-art MaaS solution that helps to tackle their mobility challenges and to achieve ambitious sustainability objectives. Our white-label product offers all the features and components needed to launch your own-branded MaaS service. With more than 50 existing deep integrations to mobility service providers and payment facilitators, we help to reduce risk, cost, and time-to-launch for new services.
