Amsterdam to launch MaaS solution for business commuters
Major employers are at the heart of a new project to introduce Mobility as a Service (MaaS) to the business district of Amsterdam in May.
A consortium of four developers (Over Morgen, Amber, Radiuz and Transdev) have created the Amaze app to give commuters a smarter alternative to driving a car to and from Zuidas.
Amaze will combine public transport with shared mobility, including car sharing, ride hailing and bikes, in a bid to cut congestion and pollution. Increasing traffic and the construction of Zuidasdok means accessibility to Zuidas will be under pressure in the years ahead, especially with building work reducing capacity on the southbound A10 road for several years.
App to plan, buy and pay for travel
Rather than get caught up in traffic jams, the MaaS platform will allow customers to “plan, buy and pay for your trip,” said Diederik Basta, Project Manager Smart Mobility, City of Amsterdam.
“What’s special about this is that we did it together with companies in the business district. We had a tender and they had a vote in which bidder should win.”
Employers will be expected to support and promote Amaze to their staff.
Two-year trial
Amaze is scheduled to last for two years and the aim is for the app to create personalised daily recommendations for the best way to travel, based on learning the individual commuting habits of employees.
The launch of the app follows a successful MaaS pilot project in Zuidas, which challenged Amsterdammers to give up their cars for two months in return for a monthly transport budget of €250. The pilot found that the MaaS triallists did not spend all of their travel budget within a month, typically using free modes of transport like cycling and walking, and one-third of them gave up their cars forever at the end of the experiment.
“The current mobility ecosystem is good for them, but two-thirds of people did not sell their cars, so there is lots of work to be done to create a good alternative to the car,” said Basta.
Nationwide MaaS?
The Zuidas MaaS pilot was one of the seven national MaaS pilots in the Netherlands, with the tender document keen for any MaaS solution to be able to scale nationally.
