Features
3 Sep 19

Lisbon to become Smart (MaaS) City

The City of Lisbon can soon become the leading MaaS City, not because of the offer, but because of the design. 

The City is developing a unique feature, which can pave the road towards MaaS more smoothly. Since MaaS brings all mobility offers in a certain area together in one app, it is crucial to know which mobility modes are operating in that area. That's why the city of Lisbon came up with a solution: it is developing a catalogue.

Trial and error

Lisbon sees the use of third-party tools to create an overall MaaS system as the key in solving local traffic, congestion and air pollution problems. In order to improve efficiency of the MaaS offer in the city, Vasco Móra, Mobility Adviser to the Deputy Mayor, City of Lisbon, tries out journey planning tools in person. 

Detecting the gaps and needs of the current offer is intended to make public transit more appealing at the end of the day. Móra for instance already detected how some apps did not include certain pedestrian ways, or used wrong real-time traffic time estimations. Removing the errors of the system makes the entire system more convenient, reliable and efficient. 

Mobility catalogue

The City of Lisbon is taking these trials to a next level by creating a mobility catalogue. This database of essential mobility infrastructure information can be used by app providers, in order to improve accuracy, detect blind spots, and provide up-to-date information. 

The catalogue will even include legislative frameworks, such as parking restrictions and specific infrastructure information. The latter for instance can have a huge impact on the actual travel time, because a bus travelling through a dedicated bus lane will be faster than one travelling through main traffic, the same applies to the quality of bike lanes used. 

Modal shift

The end goal of Lisbon: speeding up the modal shift, by getting the 150,000 daily private vehicle commuters into more sustainable mobility modes by 2030. The result: less traffic congestion, less emissions and less air pollution. Which will reward in terms of profit, people and planet. 

Therefore, the City hopes the third-party apps will use the mobility catalogue to improve their services, with the hoped focus on bike sharing and parking. The first can serve as first and last mile of the journey, while the latter can help people avoid losing time (and money) to find parking spots.  

Spread the word

A first version of the catalogue should be released in the autumn and will be available on GitHub for other cities and companies. Both can not only use the information but improve and contribute to it as well. 

Interested to know more about Lisbon’s unique mobility approach? Join us at the Fleet Europe Summit, where Miguel Gaspar, Lisbon’s Deputy Mayor for Mobility will explain how the Portuguese capital is becoming a smart city, balancing the needs of the planet with those of the people (citizens, commuters and companies) and profit. 

Authored by: Fien Van den steen