Madrid Mobility 360 (multimodal planner for urban commuting) - Observatory of Public Sector Innovation

Madrid Mobility 360' is a mobile application that allows citizens moving around the city and calculates the most efficient route between all modes of transport in the capital, both public and carsharing or bicycles. It includes a powerful route planner, which allows estimating current and future journey times, and provides the capacity on a specific bus. The app allows payment for various methods of transport and reports the CO2 emissions generated.

Innovation Summary

Innovation Overview

Madrid Mobility 360 offers a unique and fully functional MaaS (Mobility as a Service) solution, including booking, unlocking and payments and an innovative solution beyond the powerful MPlanner, Madrid Mobility 360's route planner, which is a world first in this type of tool, providing the user with information on bus occupancy.

By using intuitive color code (green, yellow, orange and red) and a message about the estimated occupancy level, the user obtains information about bus occupancy on the travel section of the specific route calculated, both while calculating a route and while waiting at the stop. This functionality is especially relevant to help users make more conscious and free mobility decisions.

Madrid Mobility 360 brings together different options in Madrid's mobility ecosystem and allows users to identify on a single map the wide range of mobility solutions available in the city. The application provides information on the main public transport operators, such as EMT city buses, metro, light rail, commuter train and intercity buses. It also includes information about the existing shared mobility options, such as BiciMAD shared electric bikes (station-based) or BiciMAD Go (free-floating), scooters, cars and motorcycles. The app identifies all assets, providing their location and information on the main characteristics of use, such as battery level in the case of electric vehicles, offering all possible alternatives to the user, intuitively and at a glance.

Madrid Mobility 360 has been developed with accessibility, security, availability, usability, data protection and privacy in mind, and offers a simple and transparent model for the mobility market to citizens. Thanks to its two main components: MRoute (the route planner) and MPass (the payment platform), Madrid Mobility 360 has been designed to respond to the needs of the mobility market by reducing complexity and offering a fully digital experience to citizens.

Madrid Movilidad 360's powerful and innovative route calculator has involved a major technological development and algorithmic optimization effort to offer citizens a differential experience. The application allows the calculation of intermodal routes, integrating all available options and optimizing routes according to their economic cost or travel time. It also takes into account some user parameters, such as their preference for walking or using one mode of transport over another.

Madrid Mobility 360 also reports the estimated CO2 emissions generated by the trip to improve citizen awareness and sustainability. In this way, the citizen can participate and lead the process of making Madrid a greener and more sustainable city. Madrid Mobility 360 integrates information provided by different organizations, public and private, including shared mobility services with no fixed base, or free-floating: this is an important innovation in the planners' framework. It provides the user with information on bus occupancy levels. This functionality is in line with the objective of flattening the public transport rush hour (COVID-19). The app also integrates the public parking service, as it allows consulting available parking spaces in real time and providing information on Smart parks and park-and-ride lots.

The incorporation of means of payment and access, such as transport card or car registration, allows citizens to take advantage of parking services and, for example, the associated "park & ride" discounts already active. This is therefore an excellent example of co-creation based on the collaboration of different public and private actors and their interoperable data.

Innovation Description

What Makes Your Project Innovative?

One of the innovations of Madrid Mobility 360 is to provide information on bus occupancy in the travel segment of the specific route calculated. In the event that the planned route includes a high occupancy section, the tool offers the user two alternative options: a second route in the same time slot with lower occupancy, and the same route at a later time with lower occupancy. This functionality allows users to plan their trips taking into account this type of service data, and to have the necessary information to modify their demand for the service, either temporally or spatially. Thus, a user waiting at the bus stop will have the information to decide whether to take the next bus or wait, if this decision entails some additional advantage, such as obtaining a free seat.

Innovation Development

Collaborations & Partnerships

The Madrid Municipal Transportation Company (Empresa Municipal de Transportes de Madrid) is responsible for Madrid Mobility 360. In order to generate multimodal routes, it was essential to reach out to companies outside the municipal scope to cooperate with, such as car sharing companies. The Madrid City Council's IT department, in collaboration with private companies, develops, integrates and operates the systems that support the app.

Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

Citizens are the ultimate beneficiaries of this innovation, as they will have a tool that allows to choose and plan the fastest, most efficient, sustainable and efficient method of transport, as well as to store and pay for transport tickets and be informed of parking occupancy.
Transport companies are directly benefited by having their potential users well informed, reducing the workloads of providing information and selling tickets.

Innovation Reflections

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

The system provides dashboards with the main indicators of its use. Beyond the figures on the impact of this service, the platform accounted almost 24k downloads and more than 10k users in 2021. Currently the itinerary recommendations includes practically all types of transport available in Madrid and allows the reservation and payment of municipal transport; for the future it is foreseen to continue adding new modes of transport and to continue cooperating with private companies.

Challenges and Failures

One of the biggest challenges is the design of the app, which we have tried to make as usable as possible considering the restrictions derived from the reduced size of mobile screens and their level of interaction with the user. The successful integration of real-time and historical information on the availability and travel times of the different modes of transport has also been a major challenge, as it is the key to making the app's results reliable and useful for its users.

Conditions for Success

Madrid Movilidad 360 is the consolidation and optimization of previous integration experiences to provide a comprehensive response to citizens with functionalities never before developed. In its development, we have invested in human teams, both at the business level (mobility) and at the IT level, making the necessary investments to cover the cost of development and to finance the acquisition and maintenance costs of the systems that support the app. Thanks to technology we can offer mobility solutions with a high degree of information to help citizens maintain a sustainable mobility experience that meets their expectations.

Replication

The solution is replicable for any city or region that operates transport fleets and has an information system with schedules and fleet information in real time. To provide multimodal information integrating other modes of transport it is necessary to make agreements with their operators and establish an interoperability model for the exchange of information.

Lessons Learned

Madrid Mobility 360 has been developed with accessibility, security, availability, usability, personal data protection and privacy in mind, and offers a simple and transparent model for the mobility market.

Thanks to its two main components: MRoute (the route planner) and MPass (the payment platform), Madrid Mobility 360 has been designed to respond to the needs of the mobility market by reducing complexity and offering a fully digital experience to citizens. Thus incentivizing the use of the solution and maximizing citizen engagement. Madrid Mobility 360 also reports the estimated CO2 emissions generated by the trip to improve citizen awareness and sustainability.