An Agent-based Framework including Diachronic MaaS Represention

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) opportunities have received great attention both in the literature and in practical implementations, as well as projects and specific case studies. Even though the well-known expected potentialities, however there are still issues to be solved, which range from platform implementations to user’s role for making effective the system. From the user side perspective, particularly important are those aspects as reliability and effectiveness of many available travel services, often managed by a unique platform. In other words, how much in MaaS schemes the offered combination of transport modes promising a “seamless and efficient experience” – included connection times and fares – potentially is able to meet users’ expectations. Starting from the above perspective, this paper proposes an agent-based framework to simulate MaaS programs by using diachronic representations of the transport services offered by the different stakeholders that share the MaaS platform. In particular, the attractiveness of some MaaS programs have been compared to the one of private cars for the same trip, from a user’s perspective, in a simulated agent-based urban scenario. The obtained results, although simulated in this preliminary test, show that the proposed framework would both provide suitable mobility solutions by using the potentialities of the diachronic network approach and capture user’s preferences. Particularly, the user propensity to change private cars towards shared solutions increases as congestion in private car network increases.