Establishing a framework methodology for covering micro-mobility in multi-modal public transport networks

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is a recent innovative transport concept, anticipated to oblige significant changes in current transport practices. This study aimed to develop a methodology to justify the potential MaaS adoption. For this purpose, an innovative methodology is presented to identify four types of stations, including “Transit (servicing travelers by bus)”, “Micro-mobility (servicing travelers by bike and scooter)”, “MaaS (servicing travelers by bus, bike, scooter, and Uber)”, and “None (no station)” for each node. The proposed methodology minimizes the total user and agency costs, including user travel time cost, out-of-pocket costs, agency construction costs for MaaS and agency MaaS operating costs. The methodology was tested with a 100 node transport network with existing bus routes. The following results were acquired: 1) Construction of micro-mobility station was not justified for 42 nodes and 37 nodes in 20-years and 30-years life cycles if only 20% of demand from shortest path demand select micro-mobility options 2) Over 20-years and 30-years life cycles, the operator benefits from daily savings amounting to $18,520 and $16,033, respectively, and 3) There are no consistent results to justify the MaaS construction and operation based on existence of the transit stations. In other words, the justification depends on users’ shortest trip paths, amount of demand, and existing transit stations.