The implications of Mobility as a Service for urban emissions

Mobility as a Service (MaaS), a user-centric framework for delivering a portfolio of multi-modal mobility services, promises to overcome negative externalities associated with the mobility sector by providing convenience to being multimodal and getting citizens away from using their private vehicles. The current work aims at providing pieces of evidence on the extent to which such a promise can be delivered. To this end, first, the adoption of MaaS and the use of various modes within MaaS bundles are examined using empirical data collected from portfolio and stated adaptation choice experiments. Next, an activity-based travel demand model (Albatross) is employed to simulate activity-travel patterns of travelers in the city of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The results are linked to an emission model and the impacts on emission levels are compared for various scenarios with different MaaS bundles. It is found that the conservative, balanced, and optimistic scenarios decrease emission levels by 3-4%, 14-19%, and 43-54%, respectively.