News

Making mobility more accessible and efficient

  • Faculty of Science, Technology and Medicine (FSTM)
    29 January 2025
  • Category
    Research
  • Topic
    Engineering

As a traveler, how can I find the best option combining public and private transport for my journey? As a service provider, what can I offer to satisfy my users while reducing costs? These questions have been tackled by researchers from the University of Luxembourg to evaluate the novel “Mobility-as-a-Service” concept.

Mobility as a service (MaaS)

MaaS is an app-based and subscription-based solution for accessing multimodal services in form of bundled packages. By joining the MaaS system, the users can travel on different modes of transport (e.g., public transport, taxis, carsharing, bike-sharing to name a few) for free or with substantial discounts if compared to the same services taken individually. MaaS gives the opportunity to cover all door-to-door journeys for the travellers in a more efficient way thanks to this integrated approach.

Fruitful collaboration with Automotive Club Luxembourg (ACL)

Over the past 10 years, we’ve worked closely with ACL in many ways. We have organised training courses for businesses, helped cities plan better transportation systems, and collaborated on research projects. In a recent common project, called MaaS4All, we have created models to predict how new transportation services would work.”

Prof. Francesco Viti

Head of the Transport Research Group (Mobilab)

Claudia Bandiera joined the team in 2019 to study the interaction between all relevant actors involved in the MaaS ecosystem. During her PhD thesis, she first analysed the feasibility of implementing a MaaS platform in Luxembourg by evaluating the transportation system, regulations, market demand, technology, and the lessons learned from other pilot projects. Then, she developed a multi-modal, multi-actor network design model using a game-theory approach to explore how service providers can maximize profits while users optimize their daily trips. The flexibility of this mathematical model allows for the analysis of different scenarios, offering valuable insights into potential strategies for regulators, mobility suppliers, and travelers alike.

My PhD research has been particularly exciting for me, as MaaS is a key topic in sustainable transportation and has gained significant attention across Europe in the recent years. ”

Dr. Claudia Bandiera

Project Officer

International recognition and future applications

The work has been presented in July 2024 during the International Symposium on Transportation and Traffic Theory (ISTTT), one of the most prestigious conferences in the transportation theory field, and the paper “Mobility service providers’ interacting strategies under multi-modal equilibrium” and has been published in a flagship journal in transportation engineering in November 2024.

Claudia studied different scenarios to evaluate the feasibility and economic sustainability of MaaS systems. She identified the conditions under which multiple potential equilibria can emerge, resulting in different profits for service providers as well as conditions where certain services may not be profitable.

“Claudia’s models can be applied to optimise multimodal mobility services, ensuring a target quality of service for users while maintaining profitability for providers. They can also be used to evaluate different business models and pricing strategies, and to quantify the added or lost value that one service might have on others”, concludes Prof. Viti.

About the Transport Research Group (Mobilab)

The Mobilab group develops computational methods for smart and sustainable transport, mobility and logistics solutions, with applications on planning, management, electromobility, multimodality and addressing relevant societal and technological challenges. The group advances the research on both fundamental and applied problems also in collaboration with national and international academic and industrial partners.