Development of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) for intercity travel & rural/island areas: the case study of Greece.

The specific features and requirements of island regions and rural areas make Mobility as a Service (MaaS) an attractive and evolving concept in the realm of Intercity/Rural/Island transportation. The primary goal of this research is to provide qualitative insights relative to the added value and development of MaaS for the previously mentioned transport services through a case study from Greece, a country with approximately 250 inhabited islands. In island settings, the primary societal motivation for MaaS is to enhance the accessibility of islands and improve individuals' access to multiple transport services. MaaS is found to have a strong potential to act as an enabler for more efficient transport and better accessibility to remote/island locations, acting in a complementary manner with currently applied "external" measures such as the Greek "Transport Equivalent". To further assess the potential, development and impact of MaaS a focus group comprised by key-representatives from industry and academia stakeholders is created. The MaaS Ecosystem, as described by the experts, is comprised of the MaaS Provider, all the intercity/rural/island transport providers currently operating in the Greek market, MaaS Enabling entities (associations, regulators, investors, research institutions), the Integration Drivers and the customers. The issue of transport providers' liability in case of disruptions and existing market regulations constitute, according to the results, an important challenge towards development of an Intercity MaaS, which needs to be addressed by legislative studies in a pan-European level. Most likely user groups for Intercity/Rural/Island MaaS are young people and digitally educated people, whilst less likely patronage groups are the elderly and "vulnerable" population groups. Relative to the external environment, high degree of fragmentation of the intercity transport industry combined by "autonomous" behavior of actors ("silo effect") appears to be the greatest threat towards MaaS whilst anticipated capital investments in infrastructure and vehicles, which are foreseen in the proxime future, are the greatest opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]