Recall from your youth a holiday when you were gifted a wad of cash from a benevolent uncle. What to spend all that money on?
Transit agencies around the U.S. are feeling the same euphoria right now as President Trump has signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2019, which went into effect Feb. 19 and continues historic funding of more than $16 billion for public transportation and intercity passenger rail. The legislation, which includes $13.4 billion for public transit and $2.6 billion for intercity passenger rail grants, was passed overwhelmingly and with a sense of urgency by Congress. In addition to the significant dollar amount, the bill specifically mandates that the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) promptly provides funds to agencies. The Federal Transit Administration is tasked with obligating 85 percent of the $2.6 billion Capital Investment Grant program by the end of 2020.
Like that day in your youth, local transit agencies across the U.S. are now being handed a wad of cash from a benevolent Uncle Sam.
The money is desperately needed, according to the American Public Transit Association (APTA), which says the DOT estimates a $90 billion backlog to bring U.S. bus and rail systems to a state of good repair. Further, APTA says the American Society of Civil Engineers has graded the condition of public transportation infrastructure a D-.
Says APTA President and CEO Paul P. Skoutelas: “This funding is essential to enable communities to provide new services to meet the growing transportation needs of their residents.”
Agreed, but not so fast.
Yes, bus tires must have thick tread and broken seats need to be fixed. Rail tracks must be oiled and aligned. Transit stations and shelters must be lit, accessible and safe. But spending only on new infrastructure is a short-sighted approach to solving cities’ congestion problems.
Before transit agencies spend billions on infrastructure, they should consider investing a fraction of the cost in a technology solution that can help anticipate future mobility demand and manage every aspect of a commuter’s daily travel. Simply upgrading the status quo won’t cut it.
The 16 trillion miles logged by the world’s commuters in 2010 is expected to surge 68 percent to 26.8 trillion by 2030, and expand another 55 percent to 41.7 trillion by 2050. With few exceptions, the transit grid in cities is not keeping pace with swelling populations and the explosive demand for mobility. The tools with which cities manage mobility today are limited to speed limits, parking places and prices, public transit subsidies, and perhaps congestion surcharge zones.
A vastly more powerful tool is required as urban mobility evolves.
The answer is Mobility as a Service (MaaS), which simplifies urban mobility by combining all of a metropolitan area’s transit and alternative mobility options along with payment mechanisms and offering it to all citizens in one single mobile app. MaaS gives consumers a unified commute experience by removing the inconvenience of fragmented trip planning and multiple mobile payment options across several apps.
MaaS also helps cities regain control of their streets by encouraging people to drive their cars less and rely more on public transit.
This works when a number of factors converge. Commuters need convenient “first and last mile” transit from their homes to their final destinations. A MaaS solution can include an on-demand shuttle that picks up passengers who live in the same neighborhood and drops them at a train station or bus hub with a minimum number of stops along the way. Once in the city, commuters can choose from a range of new mobility alternatives to arrive at their final destination: electric or kick scooters and dockless bikes for riders on a tight budget, or ride-hailing services for those willing to pay a bit more. Each of these scenarios takes cars off the road and gives commuters a better experience than sitting in gridlock, consuming increasingly expensive gasoline, adding mileage (and wear and tear) to their cars, and paying exorbitant parking lot fees.
A MaaS solution serves as the interface between riders and transit providers. It includes a multi-modal trip planner that provides citizens optimal routes combining all mobility options of personal and shared use as well as public transit. It also includes online reservation and payment functionality. And it’s built with maximum flexibility to add new mobility options like fleets of electric autonomous vehicles that will shuttle small groups of people door-to-door across short distances, and new mass transit services that will shift to accommodate large groups of people at high speeds over longer distances. Further, a good MaaS solution uses big data for planning and optimizing the network of transit options.
MaaS solutions improve mobility everywhere, in ways that will reduce the current pain of congestion, overcrowding, and the lost productivity and flared tempers that come with them. If you’re a municipality or transit agency with a few hundred million new dollars flowing in, you should consider investing a fraction of it in a MaaS solution. Your riders today and in future generations will thank you for it.
