Cases

Below you will find a list of cases that may be worked on during the duration of the summer school.

Digital Cities and Mobility as Service (Maas)

Case: Helsinki/Espoo – Tallinn and twinning Mobility services. How to integrate transportation services for travelers between Helsinki and Tallinn? What kind of business value does MaaS concept have for integrating Helsinki-Tallinn travel?

MaaS is a concept that represents a shift away from personally-owned models of transportations. This is enabled by combining services from public and private transportations providers through a unified gateway. Its primary goal is to bring together all modes of transportation, while at the same time removing the hassle of planning and one-time tickets (MAAS Global). Bundling together different mobility modes aspires to eliminate the need of owning a private car, it can be seen as a tailored mobility package which can provide users with a flexible way of traveling in the cities with growing population.

MAAS is a way to access (plan, buy, use) all transport, so it can be considered as a new extra sales channel. MaaS schemes around the world are still evolving, and most of them are located in Europe. Their structure and composition vary according to the local conditions, but they all share the core elements of being user-centric, service bundling, cooperative and interconnectivity in transport modes and across service providers. In practice, it can mean that a user can access public transportation, bike sharing, car sharing, car rental, sometimes P-2-P rental, taxis, ferries – all with a single subscription. Some of the currently operating MaaS schemes: Tuup (Turku region, Finland), My Cicero (Italy), Moovel (Germany), Whim (Helsinki, Finland), UbiGo (Stockholm, Sweden).

MaaS Global, the world’s first MaaS company originated in Finland, and commenced its operations in Helsinki on 1 February 2016. MaaS Global is operating Whim – a mobility app that allows its users to travel on everything from buses to trains, trams, taxis and rental cars. If offers different personalized packages, the monthly prices including unlimited travel on public transport, city bikes as well as a fixed amount of points to be used flexibly on taxi journeys and rental cars. Even more transport options will be added in the near future.

MaaS is currently an emerging trend and its implementation in the real world is still limited. However, its development potential is great as it responds to the megatrends of today’s society. Integrating additional personalized services to MaaS schemes is a promising development area, where first steps have been made by integrating certain municipality services, access to parking, freight transportation services and food delivery from supermarkets and restaurants. Further development requires more careful consideration of the cooperation needs between the stakeholders, balancing of their interests, and more sophisticated business model development.

Currently all available MaaS services target local residents, i.e. commuters, even though MaaS may offer great value also to visitors to a city. Although the information about public transport options is usually available even on Google map, travelers often go for the easiest options, e.g. taking a taxi or renting a car, in an unfamiliar city. These options are both expensive and only add to the congestion in the city. Thus, there is also a great potential in enabling travellers to use the same app to travel in different cities worldwide. For example, Uber has realized the vision for taxi services.

Tallinn: Digital City and Traffic Safety with Open Data

Develop a pilot informational portal that displays the information about current traffic situation in Tallinn City. What segments of professional users might be most interested in this service? What could be the different levels of access to this service?

Traditionally Estonia has improved traffic safety only reactively based on the lessons learned from the accidents that have already happened. Open Data would be a great tool to come up with proactive and preventive solutions to improve traffic safety by monitoring bottlenecks and problematic locations/situations in Estonia. Various systems are already generating vast amounts of data, which could be effectively used in applications designed to predict traffic jams or traffic accidents. There is an increasing demand for these kinds of applications among private or professional drivers who would like to avoid traffic jams or among the police who need reliable and immediate information about traffic accidents.

In the long term perspective, this information related to traffic safety would be beneficial to the urban planning department of cities such as Tallinn, which could target preventive actions to problematic locations and consider more cost-effective traffic solutions. These cost-effective solutions might for example involve further investments in public transport to improve the traffic flow or minor infrastructure improvements such as the improved positioning of traffic lights to regulate the traffic flow.

Tallinn City, Estonian Road Administration

Digital City with On Demand Driven Transport Solutions in Tallinn

Create a pilot ride-sharing system service that would connect those who offer rides with those who need them. What is the value proposition of the service? What are the cost structures, resources and revenue sources for this service? You can use lean service canvas or business model canvas to organize the analysis.

The existing networks of public transport in Tallinn suffer from a lack of flexibility, which adapt poorly into the changes in the preferences of passengers. These changes of preference may be seasonal, fluctuating between summer and school periods, or they may occur due to the dynamic development in the urban environment with the emergence of new businesses and shopping centers. Yet since the usual procurement period for the public transport services ranges from 5 to 10 years, these services are relatively incapable to cater to the changing needs of passengers. Hence, many citizens prefer to rely on their private cars, which ends up becoming a more expensive burden to the people and to the community.

In light of this context, there is a demand for more flexible and coordinated solutions such as ride-sharing services, taxis, autonomous vehicles and other transportation modes to support the existing networks of public transport. One option could be a travel planning system which connects different transport service providers for the needs of customers or a transport coordination and logistics center where customer service representatives connect the travel needs of their clients.

Tallinn has already started pilot projects which will establish autonomous transport solutions to complement the regular public transport network. One of the pilots should start in 2019.

Tallinn: Digital City and Mobility Analytics

Find the open access data and analyze it to identify the critical points (e.g. peak number of pedestrians or cyclists). Brainstorm what kind of services and commercial solutions could be helpful in those points? Plan one such kind of service or solution, using business model canvas or lean service canvas.

The mobility services and demands for pedestrians and cyclists have not received enough attention in the assessment of mobility analytics which have often focused on large-scale infrastructure analyses. Yet they form the main part of urban traffic as everyone is walking “the last mile” to their destination. Hence, there is a need for improved measuring of pedestrians and cyclists to provide them with better services and commercial solutions. These are various sources of data to measure pedestrians and cyclists such as mobile positioning, entrance counters in public transport and ticketing data.

Most of the commercial or retail centers estimate their business value on potential client visits. This data could be derived from aforementioned multiple sources to evaluate the business viability potential based on different client segments and their transport modes. The following companies in Estonia could be involved: Ridango, Positium, Taxify, Wolt, Tallinn City, Port of Tallinn.