What Happened to MaaS?

Transport planning has always had a tendency to generate new terminology. Some terms endure for decades, while others enjoy a brief period of prominence before gradually fading from everyday use.

Mobility as a Service, or MaaS, was once one of the most prominent concepts in transport planning. Today, you hardly hear the term MaaS mentioned at all.

A decade ago it was difficult to attend a transport conference, open a strategic planning document, or scroll through LinkedIn without encountering the term. MaaS was presented as a transformative concept that would fundamentally change how people access transport. Public transport, rideshare, bike share, car share, taxi services and  bicycle-based transport services would be integrated into a seamless customer experience. The future of transport appeared to be arriving through a smartphone.

Today, the term is far less visible.

That shift is noticeable in everyday professional discourse. Conference programs that once featured dedicated MaaS streams now tend to frame similar ideas under headings such as “customer experience”, “digital mobility”, or “integrated transport services”. On LinkedIn, MaaS used to appear frequently in transport planning feeds; now it shows up only sporadically, often in retrospective posts. The language has not disappeared entirely, but it has clearly lost visibility.

This observation was reinforced recently while observing changes to the organisational structure of Queensland’s Department of Transport and Main Roads. For a period, MaaS had sufficient prominence to justify dedicated executive leadership within the department. The concept sat close to the centre of transport policy discussions and digital innovation agendas. In more recent structures, MaaS no longer appears as a distinct organisational function. Similar shifts appear to have occurred elsewhere in Australia, where enthusiasm for MaaS as a standalone concept has largely given way to broader discussions around integrated transport, digital platforms and customer-centric service design.

This raises an interesting question: What happened to MaaS?

Uncertainty about the MaaS Legacy

There is a degree of uncertainty when trying to assess the legacy of MaaS.

Did it represent a genuine shift in transport thinking, or did it primarily consolidate and reframe developments that were already underway?

Integrated journey planning provides a useful example. The ability to compare travel options across multiple modes was often positioned as a defining feature of MaaS. Yet travellers were already doing this through platforms such as Google Maps long before dedicated MaaS applications emerged. Likewise, integrated ticketing, real-time service information and multimodal trip planning were already established areas of reform within transport agencies.

This makes it difficult to isolate what, if anything, was uniquely attributable to MaaS as a concept.

Mobility as a Product

Major dictionaries generally define mobility as the ability to move or be moved freely and easily. In transport contexts, it is more commonly used to describe a capacity rather than a discrete offering.

Transport operators provide services that enable this movement. Bus services, rail services, ferry services, taxi services, on-demand vehicles and bicycle-based transport services all contribute to this function. In several Southeast Asian cities, for example, motorcycle taxi networks and app-based bicycle services form an essential part of everyday urban transport supply.

Much of the MaaS discussion attempted to reposition mobility as something that could be packaged, bundled and consumed through a unified interface. Journeys could be planned, booked and paid for within a single platform. Subscription models were frequently proposed, combining multiple modes into a single offering.

In this framing, mobility was treated less as a condition enabled by transport services and more as something closer to a purchasable product experience.

This conflicts with standard dictionary distinctions between products and services. A product is generally understood as something produced for sale as a standardised or tangible offering. A service is an activity or performance delivered for the benefit of another party. Transport aligns more closely with the latter: it is operational, time-dependent and shaped by network conditions rather than fixed units of consumption.

MaaS attempted to apply product logic to a system that is fundamentally service-based.

The difficulty with this approach is that transport systems are inherently variable. Capacity, timing, geography and demand all influence service delivery in ways that do not translate cleanly into standardised product bundles.

This tension helps explain why MaaS struggled to establish itself as a distinct commercial model, even as many of its component ideas continued to evolve independently within transport practice.

Of course, some of the other difficulties MaaS encountered include fragmented commercial incentives across transport modes and the challenges of aligning operators with different ownership structures, revenue models and regulatory obligations. A further constraint was the role of publicly owned transport operators, which remain the dominant providers of core mobility services in most cities and whose participation is essential to any MaaS model. Their incentives are not always aligned with ceding control over customer interfaces and integration functions to external platforms.

Behaviour, Technology and Transport Outcomes

The underlying ambition of MaaS was to enable behavioural change through technological integration rather than technological novelty in itself.

The intent was to make transport systems easier to navigate, easier to understand and easier to combine across modes, with the expectation that this would shift travel behaviour. In particular, reducing friction between modes was seen as a way to make alternatives to private car use more attractive for certain types of trips.

This was also implicitly linked to sustainability objectives. If non-car modes were more visible, more accessible and easier to combine, then mode shift could be encouraged where viable alternatives already exist.

However, this behavioural objective was not dependent on MaaS as a label. Many of the same outcomes have been pursued through broader investments in digital navigation tools, service integration, and transport infrastructure improvements.

Beyond MaaS

As MaaS has receded as a distinct term, much of what it described remains embedded in transport practice. Journey planning systems, integrated payment platforms, real-time information services and multimodal transport options continue to evolve, largely independent of the MaaS label.

What has changed is the framing through which these developments are interpreted.

Rather than a single conceptual model of mobility delivered as a unified offering, the current trajectory is one of incremental system integration. Digital platforms, customer experience strategies and network planning reforms are advancing in parallel, without requiring a unifying label.

This suggests that MaaS was a temporary narrative wrapper rather than a distinct innovation in its own right. Digital platforms, customer experience strategies and network planning reforms have advanced on their own trajectories, without requiring a unifying MaaS construct to hold them together.

The Language of Transport Planning

The trajectory of MaaS raises a broader issue for transport planning practice.

New terminology can be useful in drawing attention to emerging patterns, but it can also obscure continuity in how transport systems actually evolve. When language becomes the focus, there is a risk that long-standing institutional and technical change is mistaken for the emergence of something entirely new.

For transport planners and traffic engineers, the responsibility is not only to adopt new concepts, but to test whether they genuinely improve understanding of how systems function. Where they do, they are useful. Where they do not, clearer description of existing practice is often preferable.

In that sense, the most important lesson from MaaS may not be about mobility systems at all, but about how easily terminology can temporarily reshape perception of familiar transport realities.

E-Bicycles vs E-Motorcycles: Similar Technology, Different Transport Futures

This blog post was prepared with the help of AI tools. 

Electric mobility is becoming an increasingly visible part of Australian transport systems. Electric bicycles and electric motorcycles are appearing more frequently in urban environments and are often grouped together as part of the same transport transition. Both rely on battery technology, both reduce dependence on petrol and both are associated with lower emissions.

However, from a mobility management perspective, similarities in technology do not necessarily translate into similar transport outcomes.

The question is not simply whether a vehicle is electric. The more important question is how that vehicle changes travel behaviour and how it interacts with the broader transport system.

Changing Mode Choice, Not Just Vehicle Technology

Electric bicycles have attracted considerable attention because they appear capable of expanding the role of active transport. For many people traditional cycling has practical barriers. Distance, topography, age and fitness can all influence whether cycling becomes a realistic transport option.

Electric assistance changes some of these constraints.

Journeys that previously felt too long or difficult may become manageable. A commuter who may never have considered cycling to work could suddenly find it practical. Public transport users can travel further to stations. Short car trips become more easily replaced.

This creates an important transport effect. E-bikes do not simply introduce a new technology; they potentially change mode choice.

The outcome matters because mode shift sits at the centre of many mobility objectives. Reducing car dependency, increasing active transport and improving network efficiency depend not only on cleaner vehicles but also on changes in travel behaviour.

“Technology substitution and mode substitution are not always the same thing.”

A Different Mobility Outcome 

Electric motorcycles may produce different effects.

Like e-bikes they reduce tailpipe emissions and can lower operating costs. However, they largely remain within the broader motor vehicle system. Like e-bikes, electric motorcycles can also offer space efficiencies and lower operating impacts than private cars. However, they generally fit within existing motorised travel patterns rather than creating a fundamentally different relationship with the transport system. Their use often represents a continuation of individual vehicle travel rather than an extension of active transport networks or multimodal travel behaviour.

In many cases they may represent technology substitution rather than mode substitution.

Replacing a petrol motorcycle with an electric motorcycle can generate environmental benefits, and both e-bikes and electric motorcycles may substitute for car trips under some circumstances. The more important distinction may be whether they encourage different travel behaviour and integrate differently with wider mobility systems.

The distinction becomes important because transport systems are shaped by cumulative effects. Small changes in individual travel decisions can eventually influence infrastructure demand and urban form.

When Perception Influences Transport Outcomes

Current debate in Queensland also highlights another issue affecting transport outcomes.

Recent concerns involving groups of young people riding high-powered electric motorcycles and electric dirt bikes have generated considerable public discussion. While these devices are often described broadly as "e-bikes", many fall outside the legal definition of an electric bicycle and operate quite differently from pedal-assisted commuter bikes.

From a mobility perspective this creates an interesting challenge.

When very different transport devices become grouped together, public perception can begin influencing transport outcomes as much as the technology itself.

Infrastructure terminology may also be contributing to the confusion. Terms such as footpath, bike path, cycleway, cycle lane and shared path are frequently used interchangeably despite describing very different environments and expectations. A separated cycleway may be designed primarily for bicycle movement, while a shared path requires interaction between cyclists, pedestrians and other users. The distinction matters because transport technologies are becoming increasingly diverse while infrastructure classifications often remain unclear to many users. Questions around where power-assisted bicycles, electric motorcycles and other emerging devices belong are becoming increasingly common. For older pedestrians, people with disabilities and users with mobility aids, uncertainty around speeds, behaviours and right-of-way can affect perceptions of comfort and safety. As transport modes continue diversifying, infrastructure design may increasingly depend not only on physical separation, but also on clearer expectations regarding how different users coexist within shared public space.

If concerns around anti-social riding behaviour alter community attitudes toward cycling infrastructure or electric mobility more generally, wider impacts may emerge. Public support for investment, infrastructure expansion and policy initiatives can all be affected by how transport technologies are perceived.

Mobility outcomes are therefore influenced by more than engineering specifications or legislation. They are also influenced by public confidence and social acceptance.

Transport planning has repeatedly encountered this issue. New mobility technologies often emerge in ways that blur established categories. The challenge is understanding not only how devices function, but how they shape behaviour, infrastructure demand and public space.

What Kind of Transport System We Create?

Electric bicycles and electric motorcycles may share batteries and motors, but they may ultimately contribute to cities in very different ways.

The central question may therefore be less about electrification itself and more about what kind of transport systems we create.The debate around electric mobility often focuses on batteries, speed and regulation. Yet transport systems have repeatedly adapted to new technologies. The question now may be whether this represents another incremental change, or the beginning of a broader shift in what kinds of movement cities are ultimately designed to support.

Virtual Reality & other future tools for Transport Planning

Talking about Transport Planning and the new tools that practitioners now have available, I must start with a definition of Transport Planning. It might seem obvious but over the years I have seen many misconceptions about what exactly is Transport Planning. One such misunderstanding is that Transport Planning equals Transport Modelling. This is quite common in Australia where transport infrastructure planning and delivery heavily relies on the “Predict and Provide” model. Other times it’s quite common to see definitions like the comic strip below:

My personal favourite definition of transport planning is the general definition of planning by Ernest R. Alexander professor of Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, in his book Approaches to Planning first published in 1986. (Transport) “Planning is the deliberate social or organisational activity of developing an optimal strategy of future action to achieve a desired set of goals, for solving novel problems in complex contexts, and attended by the power and intention to commit resources and to act as necessary to implement the chosen strategy.”

Transport Planning is a multi-disciplinary, collaborative and participatory approach that is future oriented with a purpose to support decision making. It is the first step to transport infrastructure delivery. In summary, Transport Planning involves data collection and analysis, forecasting relevant indicators, designing of alternatives and assessing of the impacts each alternative will have.

persuasive storytelling about the future”

James A. Throgmorton, professor of Urban and Regional Planning in the University of Iowa describes planning as persuasive storytelling about the future.

“In this great future, you can't forget your past”.

As all Transport Futurists do, before talking about the future, I will discuss a lot the past. After all, as the great Bob Marley suggested, “In this great future you can't forget your past”.

Transport planning is an activity that goes back in history all the way to the first human settlements. The first advanced civilisations were distinguished among other things also by the way they planned and organised their transport systems. War and mass travel of armies was the first driver for organised transport planning. My ancient Roman colleagues planning for Via Appia or Via Egnatia had only just a few tools to perform their work. Over the years tools were developed to make transport planning more effective. From cartography and compass to surveying techniques there wasn’t much progress made until the 1970’s. The picture of large rooms full of transport planning professionals, planners, engineers, designers and drafters, developing drawings using paper, pencils, drawing triangles and protractor rulers was common in the 70’s.

And then the evolution changed pace drastically. The introduction of computers, computer aided design and plotters made a huge impact not only in the effectiveness of transport planning work but mainly in how this work was communicated to decision makers, stakeholders and the community.

Soon the true potential of these tools was realised. Why just stay with two dimensional black and white (or blueprint) drawings? 3D drawings were now being used, not only for architectural design but sometimes also for transport planning recommendations.

Visualisation is a term that existed from the 1880 but it really took off a hundred years later. Visualisation is defined as the process of representing data graphically using technologies and media and interacting with these representations to gain insight into the data.

And today, visualisation is helping us transport planners and engineers, enhance our work and make it much easier to communicate to peers, decision makers and the public.

The simplest of visualisation tools is the Photo Montage or also known in the digital world as Photoshopping. Photomontage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph. In transport planning a usual photomontaged image will have the proposed transport infrastructure included in a photograph of the site as is before the intervention. 

The game engine is the game changer

A game engine is a software framework designed for the creation and development of video games. In many cases game engines provide a suite of visual development tools in addition to reusable software components. The last few years, the game engine technology matured and became more user-friendly. The application of game engines has broadened in scope.

Game engines such as the Unreal Engine are now used by transport planning teams to present their work in a variety of forms and media. Still images developed from a Game Engine are easier to make and more realistic looking.

Game engines can also develop fly-throughs. A Fly-through is a visual sequence (computer animated simulation) of what would be seen while flying through a particular region.. Fly-throughs in transport planning are used most often during the early stages of large infrastructure projects to depict its basic elements such as location, alignment and impacts in the surrounding environment. 

Stakeholder and public consultation now have excellent tools that help people understand the transport planning options and designs. The technology allows them to view the designs in a 3D photorealistic way and record their comments and remarks on the design itself exactly at the point that they want to, whether this is for a DDA compliance issue of a ramp or a handrail that needs to be extended.

Virtual Reality is the next step in the digital tools that are now available for transport planners and traffic engineers.  The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines Virtual Reality, as an artificial environment which is experienced through sensory stimuli (as sights and sounds) provided by a computer and in which one's actions partially determine what happens in the environment. The user wears an enclosed headset, that allows them to move virtually inside the model, without any reference back to the real world. Even former US president Barack Obama has narrated and “starred” in a new VR film about the White House and all of its historic rooms.

For transport planning, Virtual Reality (VR) models present a series of superior visualisation characteristics:  Understanding scale and the size of every element is not a problem anymore as the user experiences everything in a real world scale and every object at their actual size. Immersive is often the term used to describe the experience that VR offers its users. And this user experience – allowing people to navigate inside the models, is exactly where VR offers the biggest advantages. Moving through spaces, understanding scale and how the design will coexist with the built and natural environment is a novelty that 3D images and photomontages or even fly-throughs don't offer. VR applications can be used to simulate walking through a space or driving a car under different road conditions. When planning and designing for a cycleway, a VR application can be used to simulate cycling through the proposed infrastructure. 

What Transport and Main Roads staff had to say?

Trying to understand the true value of such a tool I organised a series of demonstrations of VR applications that Aurecon, my previous employer have developed over the previous years. The demonstrations took place from August 2016 till May 2017 and involved a number of QLD DTMR people from different areas, age groups, employment levels and professional backgrounds. After each demonstration, a survey link was send to the participants.

The survey response rate was phenomenal. Surveys that are distributed internally (that is to employees) generally receive a 30-40% response rate. The response rate of those distributed to external audiences (that is to customers) is lower, around 10-15%. This survey received a response rate of 67%.

This can be explained by the results of the first question that I asked. Overall, how satisfied are you with your experience using our new VR tool/application? I used the term extremely to describe the top limit of the available answers on purpose. Usually surveys avoid using such strong terms and prefer the use of the term “very”, to describe the highest level of satisfaction. The reason behind this is that most people avoid describing their feelings in such a strong way. My own personal experience made me use such a term, trying to understand if other people felt the same way as I did from this experience. An amazing 80% of the respondents said that were extremely satisfied with their Virtual Reality experience.

 The main purpose of this survey was to ask the question: How useful do you think such a tool/application could be in transport planning and traffic engineering work? Again, the results are very promising for the actual usefulness of this tool. Almost 95% of the respondents think that Virtual Reality is a very or extremely useful tool for transport planning.

Then I asked: How useful do you think such a tool/application could be in your own specific field of work? This time the results were more balanced. Still more than 60% believed that it is a very or extremely useful tool. There was also a 20% that thought that the tool is slightly or not at all useful in their line of work. Document control, Cost estimation, administration support, policy development was some of the fields of work that appeared in these answers.

In this survey, I have asked also a number of other questions relating to the

problems that VR could assist with, how likely it was for people to include VR in their next project and what are some of the benefits and also barriers that are associated with VR in transport planning and traffic engineering projects. Out of a series of very interesting findings and conclusions, the following quote stood out for me:

“Making people with limited understanding of drawings understand projects benefits and limits”

The final verdict for VR

The final verdict from the VR demonstrations and the survey is that Virtual Reality:

• Provides an exciting experience for project staff, stakeholders and public
• Is useful in many areas and tasks in transport planning
• Provides many benefits for projects and people involved

VR applications, depending on the project and the existing 3D design model, can be delivered at a very low cost.

Future tools

But Virtual Reality is not the only tool that traffic engineers and transport planners will use in the future. Augmented Reality (AR), a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user's view of the real world, thus providing a composite view, is just making its first steps in the transport infrastructure planning and design industry. Already introduced to the wider public by the Pokemon Go game, AR and devices such as the Microsoft Hololens have the potential to make VR applications obsolete. Instead of looking at the design of the new train station at a special purpose room at the office, soon we will have the ability to look the same design in-situ.

And then there is Holograms, three-dimensional images formed by the interference of light beams from a laser or other coherent light source. In the Holograms case, we won’t even need a special headset to see the design of the new train station at its location. The new design will be projected in place by laser and other light sources. Such large-scale applications exist already with the example of the Buddha of Bamiyan, a 53 m high hologram presented in place where the original Buddha sculpture was destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. In a similar way, the set of traffic lights at a specific location could project the images of pedestrians crossing the street to alert their drivers of their red light or the car might project useful information on the road ahead to alert its driver. And of course, for all us Star Trek fans out there, we can’t wait until the day the Holodeck becomes a reality.

In an industry facing imminent disruption of the way we work and communicate our work to our clients, it is important to understand the new challenges that we need to successfully face. These challenges are at the same time great opportunities to improve the quality of our work and be more effective in solving not only the transport problems of today but also the problems that will arise with this new mobility.

The Australian Institute of Traffic Planning and Management. Supporting transport planners' and engineers' careers now and in the future.

Last week, I attended the 2016 AITPM National Traffic and Transport Conference in Sydney (26-29 July, Westin Hotel). The Australian Institute of Traffic Planning and Management (AITPM) is celebrating 50 years as the peak industry body for transport planners and traffic engineers. With five branches across Australia and more than 850 members and corporate members, AITPM provides leadership and support not only to its members but also to the wider community.

Among the objectives of the organization is to promote the positive and productive aspects of traffic and transport planning and management. It is also to increase members' knowledge within the field and to foster research. To reach these objectives, AITPM centrally and also through the State branches undertakes a range of activities. Technical seminars where the latest advances in transport planning and engineering are presented; networking events that present excellent opportunities for collaboration; and training courses in a variety of sub-disciplines are some of the types of events held every year.

Right from my first couple of months when I moved to Australia back in September 2011, I decided to join AITPM and participate in my first event, the annual Gold Coast dinner. As per the Australian tradition, during the Christmas period, lots of networking events held by AITPM in Gold Coast and Brisbane allowed me to quickly set up a network of fellow transport professionals. This proved very useful in securing my first Australian role with Brisbane City Council. Since then, I attended all National conferences (Sydney 2012, Perth 2013, Adelaide 2014, Brisbane 2015) and almost every event organised by the QLD branch

Grateful of all the help I got from my participation, I decided I should give something back and volunteered for assisting with the AITPM activities. Being part of the AITPM QLD committee since 2012 and Vice President for 2014 and 2015 gave me great satisfaction in contributing to the Institute’s growth in members and reputation. The highlights of these past years were my presentations at the National Conferences in Sydney and Adelaide, winning the NZ Study Tour award and organising the “Underground Bus and Train project - A new way to travel” breakfast seminar. The first AITPM event to be held at the newly renovated Brisbane City Hall where Transport and Main Roads’ Deputy Director-General - Policy, Planning and Investment Division Matt Longland and the –at the time- TMR General Manager - Major Planning Projects and Project Director for BaT (Bus and Train) Arthur Stamatoudis informed our members about a world first design that saw buses and trains travelling at the same tunnel, while we all enjoyed a luxury breakfast. Some other contributions worth mentioning were organising a breakfast seminar with the -at the time- TMR Deputy Director-General Customer Services, Safety and Regulation, Graham Fraine; helping organise the sold-out breakfast seminar with TMR’s Director General, Neil Scales; and of course being part of the organising committee of the 2015 National Conference held in Brisbane.

I was even more pleased when my colleagues in AITPM QLD branch committee recognised my efforts and contribution and elected me unopposed as the new president of the branch, starting from 1 August 2016. I consider it a great privilege and honour to have my name next to people that are widely recognised in the transport planning and engineering industry and served from this role in the past. From the early presidents of AITPM, or Australian Institute of Traffic Technology as it was the first name back in 4th July 1966 when about 60 members and a budget of $33 formed the Institute, all the way to 22 June 1981 when the constitution was amended on to change the Institute’s name to the Australian Institute of Traffic Planning and Management. And from 1989 when the Queensland branch was established, all the way to today, a number of people served AITPM and helped it become the organisation that is now. With the risk of missing people that in the past have played an even more significant role, I have to mention the last Qld president Gary Wood from Translink and Dan Sullivan the AITPM National Secretary that we worked closely together over the last two years to achieve great outcomes. I will also need to mention, Miranda Blogg, Haider Yousif, Torry Crellin, Manu Hingorani, Deva Neiker, Jon Bunker, Jon Douglas, Mel Hallet, John Olsen, Sandra Finster, Bob Taylor, Tony Avent and Wendy Adam, all past AITPM Qld presidents that contributed in growing the Institute and getting it to the point that is today.

I am certain that even more exciting times lie ahead of us. With the Young Professional Group and the Transport Modelling User Group established in 2012 and growing ever since and with our Strategic Plan 2013-2017, I am confident that we have strong foundations to build upon. An enhanced focus on Professional Development, new tools for Information Dissemination and the commitment and drive of all committee members across Australia ensure that we will keep providing enormous value to our members and the communities we live in. I wish to invite all Transport and Traffic practitioners to join AITPM. For just $175 per year and at no cost for students, you get a very informative technical seminar or networking event each month and a range of other membership benefits. I wish also to invite engineering and planning consultancies to become corporate members and take part in all the discussions for the future of transport.