Accessibility potential of long-distance Mobility-as-a-Service

Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) integrates multiple transportation modes into a unified, on-demand mobility service tailored to customer preferences and needs. While increasingly explored for short distances and urban settings, there is still a limited academic debate about its applicability for long-distance travels. This contribution examines the potential of long-distance MaaS for long-distance trips and systematic travellers, by assessing its accessibility potential and comparing it to the solo driving option. First, the scheme and possible business models of long-distance MaaS are proposed, expanding on available literature through an extensive review. Then, a method to calculate the potential of long-distance MaaS is proposed, by calculating its accessibility via an adapted version of the travel-cost approach. The convenience is evaluated under different policy scenarios, such as toll reductions for shared vehicles, dedicated infrastructure and incentives in a case study located in Northern Italy. The results offer quantitative insights into the likelihood of long-distance MaaS of being a reliable alternative to both private vehicles and conventional public transport, thus enhancing the accessibility of a destination by means of MaaS-supported multimodal solutions. In particular, the improvement of the multimodal transfer experience and the reduction of out-of-vehicle travel times are found to guarantee better accessibility by long-distance MaaS, compared to driving, for up to 95% of trips. A discussion about the possible modal choice implications and the interplay between stakeholders ends the contribution.