German transportation software developer PTV Group has launched a new suite of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) systems at the Transportation Research Board’s (TRB) Annual Meeting, which is currently taking place in Washington DC in the USA on January 8-12.
PTV has released what it calls its new Mobility-as-a-Service Accelerator Program, a complete portfolio of component technologies for planning MaaS operations all the way to operating and managing MaaS in any given city around the world. PTV already has an existing suite of products that are designed to aid the planning and optimization of everything that moves people and goods. The company offers software, data, content, consulting and research for traffic and transport planning, including the widely-used Visum and Vissim modeling and simulation software suites, and the Optima real-time traffic prediction and management platform.
At the TRB Annual Meeting, PTV’s latest MaaS strategy was explained by Miller Crockart (right), the company’s vice president of global sales and marketing for traffic products.
“Everyone has heard about the ‘Lisbon study’, in which we participated as a member of the corporate partner board of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), and the potential implications of the introduction of shared mobility, MaaS and autonomous vehicles. The evaluation of such approaches is essential for all cities, transit operators, fleet operators and automotive OEMs alike,” noted Crockart.
“The way we have previously planned for the movement of people and goods has been radically altered with the advancements of these technologies and new ‘shared’ approaches,” he continued.
“So being able to, as it were, replicate the ‘Lisbon study’ for each city and potential operator, is something PTV has developed as a commercially available software suite, capable of quickly and efficiently evaluating MaaS.
“We are already working with several cities and automotive OEMs on what we call MaaS Modeller studies, which evaluate the introduction, KPIs, and appropriate parameters, to allow MaaS, and eventually, fleets of AVs (autonomous vehicles) to become part of the overall transport eco-system.”
“We are unique in that we understand the demand management side of this topic, and also the routing, scheduling and trip optimization aspects. For many years we’ve addressed the traffic demand management market, and also separately, the logistics and fleet optimization and management market. Bringing these two aspects together has given us the ideal solution to planning, optimizing and operating MaaS, and eventually the full deployment of fleets of AVs. Not only does one have to plan or model and evaluate the possibility to operate MaaS, but will also then have to integrate it with the overall ‘mobility mix’, operate, regulate and control it.”
Crockart concluded, “We see ourselves as the key intelligent mobility component provider, and our software programs and optimization technologies have been designed to plug and play within these quickly evolving third party environments. Our complete MaaS Accelerator Program will take a client, or partner, all the way from modeling and evaluating MaaS operations, through to simulating, optimizing actual operations, controlling, and where necessary, integrating with a city or state’s overall mobility platform.”
