Shared mobility development as key for prompting mobility as a service (MaaS) in urban areas: The case of Madrid

In order to implement Mobility as a Service (MaaS), two main conditions are required: a consolidated public transport system and a varied shared mobility offer. Our study explores the latter condition in the case of Madrid. Through the Multi-Level Perspective framework, emerging shared mobility operators and their service characteristics are diagnosed, in order to explore how this is influencing MaaS developments at the niche level. Our findings show that Madrid has more than 30 services available and an approximate total fleet of almost 30 thousand vehicles, managed by 29 different operators. This dynamic ecosystem of mobility options is facilitating MaaS, as users begin to find it difficult when navigating through all the different applications raising users' and authorities' interest on the subject. However, although there are at least three ongoing MaaS initiatives in the city, there is no collaboration between them. The current state of cooperation supports what other authors have established as one of the main challenges to MaaS' feasibility: poor governance frameworks for MaaS.