David Hensher, Professor of Management, and the founding director of the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, and one of our speakers at the 2020 Transport of Tomorrow conference, was profiled recently in a piece on The University of Sydney website.
The profile was entitled, Smarter transport solution could transform door-to-door work commute, and it predominantly covers the professor’s work on an iMOVE project, Maas Trial in Sydney.
What does the trial involve?
Using an app-based setting, the project will enrol participants in a six-month trial. Eligible participants, who work, live, and travel in the Greater Sydney area will arrange their everyday travel needs through a MaaS app (a customised version of Skedgo’s TripGo) linked to subscription plans.
The plans will give participants access to public transport (including train, tram, ferry, and bus) and a large portfolio of car-based transport services (e.g. taxi and car rental, Uber, Car Next Door, and GoGet).
The participants will be able to find, compare (e.g., in terms of cost, travel time, emissions and health benefits) and book these services through the app. As such, the trial will enable the participants to perform multimodal journeys seamlessly. The trial will explore the benefits of greater freedom of mobility.
Hensher is bullish about the prospects of not only the trial, but MaaS itself.
‘We’re repackaging transport options. Some people might want to continue using the modes the way they do now. But we can offer discounts. We want to expose them as they go through the app to other opportunities that may be more sustainable. The big objectives are to get people to reduce car use and to move away from an asset ownership society to a sharing society.’
It’s anticipated that findings of the Sydney MaaS trial will be presented at Transport of Tomorrow 2020, at which Professor Hensher will be a keynote speaker.
Find out a little more about the professor and his work in iMOVE’s extensive interview, David Hensher: Transport economist.