NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – With Covid-19 lockdowns causing mass transit ridership in many cities to virtually fall off a cliff–with such cities as London, New York and San Francisco reporting drops of more than 90%–transport providers worry that some riders may not come back, even after the pandemic ends.
But backers of Mobility-as-a-Service, which seeks to combine multimodal trip planning, booking and payments into one app or platform, have begun to promote their platforms as a way to enable customers to avoid crowded trains and buses and instead find transport options the customers might consider less risky.
“Covid-19 routing: People will avoid crowded (train and bus) cars, so let’s guide them toward the less-crowded routes, the less-crowded cars, try to space them as much as possible,” said Thomas Wolf, COO for HaCon, a subsidiary of Germany-based Siemens, which provides software products for public transportation, mobility and logistics. Siemens has provided MaaS technology to such countries or cities as Luxembourg, Dubai and San Francisco. “There’s something we can do about it. Information is available and these are real-life examples; it’s not fiction. We’re doing this already.”
