Study trip to Helsinki 2018
October 2018, Mistra SAMS visited Helsinki to study the development of MaaS in Finland.
In October, researchers from Mistra SAMS visited Helsinki to study the development of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) in Finland. Helsinki was chosen as a relevant place for the research team to visit as Finland is the first Nordic country that has started to transform its transport legislation in an extensive way to open up for new ideas for a more user-centric transport system. The recently implemented Act on Transport Services will create a framework for a more efficient arrangement of publicly subsidised passenger transport by utilising digitalisation, combined transport, and different fleet types. Among other things, the act requires that transport share traffic and passenger data, and create application programming interfaces (API:s) that allow third parties to sell tickets.
In Helsinki, researchers met representatives from academia, business and government. All the actors that Mistra SAMS met presented very similar views on the development of MaaS in Finland, with the same keywords: innovation, business opportunities and user perspectives, being highlighted. The new legislation, and a general push in Finland for digitilization, has generated a large number of pilot projects and innovative mobility service companies.
However, Mistra SAMS researchers are concerned that there seems to be no coherent plan for evaluation of the sustainability effects of the new legislation, or a risk analysis of possible future need for (renewed) public interference in the market place to ensure public interests. There also seems to be no clear strategy, and perhaps no one actor with responsibility, for how to integrate pilot projects with each other and with the day-today work being carried out by public actors.
Public actors in Finland appear to have a great willingness to test innovations in real life and to evaluate how they work. Many MaaS innovations are developing as a result, and Finland is ahead of Sweden in MaaS. However, there are as yet no services combining Maas and Accessibility-as-a-Service (AaaS) in the Finnish market. Mistra SAMS looks forward to following how MaaS develops in our neighbour country and what effects its current boom will have on sustainable accessibility and mobility for Finnish travelers.
Dowload the full travel report (pdf 3.6 MB)
Mistra SAMS visited:
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd
Aalto University School of Business
City of Helsinki, Urban Environment Division
LVM Ministry for Transport and Communications
Anne Berner, Minister of Transport and Communications
Mistra SAMS participants:
Anna Kramers, Bhavana Vaddadi, Fredrik Johansson, Greger Henriksson, Jacob Witzell, Jan Andersson, Jane Summerton, Jonas Åkerman, Karolina Isaksson, Malin Henriksson, Martin Sjöman, Teo Enlund, Tina Ringenson,Tobias Abrahamsson