Shared Mobility in Rural Contexts: Organizational Insights from Five Mobility-as-a-Service Pilots in Sweden

Åsa Hult, Liisa Perjo and Göran Smith
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Åsa Hult: Sustainable Society Unit, IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, 114 28 Stockholm, Sweden
Liisa Perjo: Sustainable Society Unit, IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, 114 28 Stockholm, Sweden
Göran Smith: Mobility and Systems, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, 417 56 Gothenburg, Sweden

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 18, 1-17

Abstract: Despite a growing interest in using Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) as a tool to address rural transport problems, the question of how to organize such a concept remains unanswered. To address this knowledge gap, this article explores organizational elements of rural MaaS pilots. The analysis, which is based on participatory observation and interviews with actors involved in five pilots in rural areas of Sweden, reveals that the motives of the actors involved in rural MaaS both overlap with and diverge from the frequently stated objectives of urban MaaS developments. Both concepts center on complementing and extending public transport, but while urban MaaS is underpinned by the fight against climate change, congestion, and local pollution, the main objective of rural MaaS is to reduce transport poverty. The analysis, moreover, illustrates that despite the geographic differences, actors involved in rural MaaS pilots face similar organizational challenges as have been reported from urban MaaS developments. In both cases, actors struggle with finding their roles, mitigating uncertainties, distributing responsibilities, and negotiating business models. Finally, the analysis finds that rural MaaS puts higher expectations on user involvement than urban MaaS and identifies a risk that rural MaaS developments might contribute to spatial injustice since the studied pilots only supported rural communities with high social capital.

Keywords: emerging mobility services; Mobility-as-a-Service; shared mobility; governance; rural development; Sweden (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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