Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) transit planning apps provide a simple, convenient way for transit users to plan trips, make payments, and book on-demand rides—enhancing the user experience and encouraging more transit use. While prevalent in urban areas, these apps are uncommon in rural settings.
A new study led by U of M Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering associate professor and CTS scholar Alireza Khani and sponsored by the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) investigated how bringing a MaaS system to rural Minnesota could make transit more accessible. Study results showed that the app increased ridership and improved transportation equity.
“While MaaS has been primarily developed for urban areas, we saw the potential benefits for rural areas,” Khani says. “It could improve access to transportation options and reduce isolation in rural communities, improve the passenger experience when planning trips and rides, and offer cost savings and decrease burdens for transit agencies through increased automation and coordination.”
To assess these benefits, researchers deployed a MaaS app in southern Minnesota. The study area is served by seven different transit agencies covering the mid-sized cities of Rochester and Mankato with multiple fixed bus routes, five smaller cities with one or two bus routes each, and the surrounding areas. Transit agencies in the region also offer some on-demand, door-to-door ride services, including paratransit services. Researchers used two datasets to compare the study area with a control group (similar rural Minnesota regions without MaaS) before and after the app’s deployment.
Researchers began by examining the transit operations and user behaviors prior to the MaaS app’s implementation. They observed significant disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, which continued until the period just prior to the app’s deployment in 2023. The researchers also uncovered areas for which MaaS could facilitate improvements. For example, when reserving demand-response transit rides, the ride time requested was often not the ride time assigned; more than 30 percent of users were assigned a ride time that differed from their requested time by a half hour or more.
The analysis of the MaaS app’s post-deployment impacts yielded valuable insights into ridership patterns, behavioral changes, and equity considerations for rural transit. The study findings reveal the app’s effectiveness in driving ridership gains: ridership for demand-response and paratransit services increased 4.2 percent over nine months following its deployment compared to the control group’s 0.2 percent increase.
Additionally, the study’s results shed light on shifts in reservation behaviors. “The trip-planning features of MaaS notably reduced the number of calls transit agencies are receiving in the early morning at the start of business hours and reduced same-day trip requests,” Khani says.
MaaS also positively affected several transit equity measures. Most notably, it helped alleviate communication challenges stemming from language barriers. Conversely, the equity score for individuals with limited internet access saw the least improvement because of the MaaS app’s reliance on a stable internet connection.
Researchers believe continuing to develop MaaS for rural settings could achieve even more social goals: improving convenience and efficiency by fully automating the trip booking and cancellation process, providing notifications and real-time information, and enabling intermodal connections between transit services.
“Rural MaaS initiatives present numerous untapped opportunities awaiting further exploration and development,” Khani adds. “Moving forward, MaaS has the potential to improve connections for people, reduce the workload for transit agencies, and expand the benefit of the region’s transit system.”
—Megan Tsai, contributing writer
