# Enabling Technologies for Urban Smart Mobility: Recent Trends, Opportunities and Challenges
## 4 Smart Mobility Services and Applications  
### Mobility-as-a-Service  
The emergence of the Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) paradigm is a trend that is expected in the coming years in the area of mobility in smart cities. The current reality of door-to-door journeys seems to have its days numbered as it does not comply with the sustainable development objectives and lags behind the MaaS platforms in terms of costs and travel time [63]. The objective of MaaS platforms is to provide an alternative to the use of private transportation with several underlying consequences, including a reduction in traffic congestion and volume restrictions on urban transport capacity. In the coming years, we will witness the emergence of a global platform that integrates various modes of transport, with an on-demand service and where information is available in real time and in a predictive manner in such a way that allows the provision of services such as multimodal routes. Several services have appeared in recent years that promote the vision of the MaaS paradigm: carpooling (sharing the car for a given trip in order to prevent several people from traveling to the same place), ridesharing companies (companies that match passengers and vehicle drivers), bicycle and e-scooters sharing systems (systems that allow the rental of bicycles or electric scooters for a short period of time) or carsharing (car rental model for short periods of time). The recent advances in autonomous cars are a promise for the short-medium future to help materialize the MaaS paradigm. This will put in perspective the need for people to own a car, both in economic terms as well as in benefits compared to using on-demand services that are expected to have much more affordable costs when the use of autonomous vehicles becomes widespread.  
One of the challenges that the coming years will bring includes the creation of a global MaaS platform integrating several geographically dispersed MaaS platforms and heterogeneous in their genesis, which could also lead to the creation of unified standards. Two main characteristics can be pointed out to a MaaS system [63; 64]: (1) to be multimodal, a MaaS platform must necessarily include different types and modes of transport, and (2) to be user-centric, the result of a MaaS platform must be adapted to the needs and preferences of each user, preferably collected in an implicit and transparent way according to what is the history and patterns of their mobility.  
Some of the challenges that a MaaS will help solve in a smart city include [63; 64]:  
* High number of private cars within a city
* Little attractiveness for citizens when it comes to using public transport
* Little use of active modes of transport
* Less adequate location of specific places for bicycles, scooters and parking links and its lack of integration with the transport network
* Lack of accessibility to transport systems by people with disabilities or old people
* Lack of information in real time for citizens
* Lack of an integrated public transport platform, routes suitable for each user, on-demand parking, active mobility and unified payment systems for the entire transport network
* Lack of understanding of citizens' mobility patterns
* Lack of information for citizens about the consequences of their fewer active habits in the carbon scab  
The benefits we can expect from a MaaS include [63; 64]:  
* An easier way for citizens to plan, book and pay for mobility services (which will also facilitate citizens abandoning the private vehicle)* Improving the efficiency of the transit network
* Reduced costs for citizens
* Decreased traffic congestion
* Reducing the ecological footprint
* Predicting demands
* Making personalized suggestions to citizens
* Allowing providers to plan ahead and meet citizens' needs
* Increasing convenience, effectiveness and customer satisfaction
* Ease of payment
* Revenue growth for transportation service providers.