Outgrowing the Private Car—Learnings from a Mobility-as-a-Service Intervention in Greater Copenhagen

Abstract

This article discusses the potentials of reorienting traditional rational transport planning towards a mobilities approach that includes social perspectives of practices in everyday lives. Empirically, the discussion is based on results from a MaaS intervention project in two urban areas and one sub-urban area in Greater Copenhagen. This article argues that attention to context, experience, storytelling, identity, and inequality are fundamental in changing interlocked, non-sustainable practices. Achieving a sustainable transformation of transportation, including promoting shared mobility and MaaS solutions as alternatives to private car use, requires a holistic view of the role and organization of everyday mobilities as more than just a technological issue. This article concludes that MaaS has the potential to be a strong tool, but technologies and short experiments are not enough. New MaaS solutions need time to implement, and relying on the free market as a way forward is potentially problematic when this can lead to mobility inequalities between different areas.