Yale Zhuxiao Wong

The University of Sydney · Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies (ITLS)

Focus groups on shared, autonomous vehicles (SAVs) in New South Wales expressed “sharing anxiety”—an intense concern about the prospect of sharing their mobility journey with strangers, without a driver or authority figure present. This presents a significant barrier to the acceptance of SAVs, particularly autonomous public and on-demand transport...

Mobility as a service (MaaS) promises a bold new future where bundled public transport and shared mobility options (carsharing, ridesharing, bikesharing and microtransit) will provide consumers with seamless mobility on par with and exceeding that of private vehicle ownership. Whilst there is a growing body of work examining the market and end user...

As connected, electric, and autonomous vehicle (AV) services are developed for cities, the research is conclusive that the use of these services must be shared to achieve maximum efficiency. Yet, few agencies have prioritised designing an AV system that focuses on dynamic ridepooling, and there remains a gap in the understanding of what makes peopl...

Automated driving technology along with electric propulsion are widely expected to fundamentally change our transport systems. They may not only allow a more productive use of travel time, but will likely trigger completely new business models in the mobility market. A key determinant of the future prospects of both existing and new mobility servic...

This paper summarises our findings from discussing emerging business models in transportation. Going well beyond big data and regulatory issues, we also examine how new and emerging business models, leveraging on advances in digital technology, can enable more efficient, consumer centric and viable transport provision. One popular emerging solution...

The widespread adoption of smartphones, ridesharing and carsharing have disrupted the transport sector. In cities around the world, new mobility services are both welcomed and challenged by regulators and incumbent operators. Mobility as a Service (MaaS), an ecosystem designed to deliver collaborative and connected mobility services in a society in...

Bus rapid transit on dedicated right-of-way and branded bus services with a distinct visual identity have been implemented in various forms around Australia over the past three decades. A major public policy debate has surrounded the relative success of these bus priority and branding measures as compared with generic route services in attracting p...

The chapter synthesises the role that government might or should play in the evolving MaaS market to ensure that societal outcomes are supported. These include the great potential to deliver new transport services, improve road safety, alleviate congestion, and increase productivity. It focusses on a number of costs and benefits that define the con...

Despite an overwhelming interest in Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) within the transport sector in recent years, very few such services are hitherto operational. In order to improve the understanding of why the MaaS concept has proven difficult to realise, this chapter sets out to map key institutional barriers. The chapter draws on documented MaaS ac...

The purpose of this chapter is to motivate the need and rationale for MaaS, in the context of a changing mobility landscape. The chapter begins with some commentary on the hype and rhetoric which has accompanied the MaaS proposition in recent years. Greater clarity is brought to the MaaS concept, dispelling some of the myths which have circulated a...

This chapter seeks to capture experience with MaaS trials to date. Five specific cases are selected for in-depth assessment; two from Sweden (UbiGo and EC2B in Gothenburg); one from Finland (Whim in Helsinki); one from Germany (Mobil-Flat in Augsburg); and one from Australia (Tripi in Sydney). In contrast to the bulk of MaaS and MaaS-like trials, t...

This chapter sets the current debate and experience in the context of the early roots of MaaS. It begins by looking at the background, noting in particular the enabling role of technological change and the developments in the service-sharing economy which have encouraged wide scale on-demand mobility services and the emergence of MaaS. The various...

As MaaS continues to evolve, a key driver for its success will be the market demand and user willingness to pay for mobility services. This chapter examines the demand for MaaS products where travellers can either pre-pay for their mobility services bundled into a MaaS plan or Pay-as-you-Go (PAYG) through a smartphone app that offers one-stop acces...

Supply-side issues around the service delivery of mobility as a service (MaaS) are an important but often neglected aspect in the transport futures discussions, as compared with the demand-side issues covered in Chapter 5. This chapter begins by reviewing how governments procure public transport, particularly relating to how the allocation of respo...

This chapter recaps the contribution of this book by revisiting the questions of the global debate identified in Chapter 3 to examine how many of these questions now have answers, to identify those areas where there are ‘still more questions than answers’, and to compile a list of unanswered questions which need to be the preoccupation of future re...

This overview article proposes a revised approach to improve the urban realm, against the backdrop of new models for delivering transport services as digitalisation, collaborative consumption and autonomous technologies take hold. We propose the concept of modal efficiency illustrated through a conceptual framework situating both existing and emerg...

Mobility as a Service (MaaS), which uses a digital platform to bring all modes of travel into a single on-demand service, has received great attention and research interest. Different business models have emerged in which travellers can either pre-pay for their mobility services bundled into a MaaS plan, or pay-as-they-go using a smart app linked t...

Thredbo 15 is the fifteenth biennial conference of the International Conference on Competition and Ownership in Land Passenger Transport. Since its inception, 620 completed workshop and other papers presented at the conference have been published. A review of features of the papers, how they have changed over time, and the extent to which they have...

This is a companion paper to Bray, Hensher, and Wong (2018), reviewing developments in public transport institutional reform, contract design and implementation over the past 30 years since the inception of the International Conference Series on Competition and Ownership in Land Passenger Transport (known as the Thredbo Series). Whilst Thredbo has...

A report for Sustainable Business Australia

This special edition research paper was commissioned by the Bus Industry Confederation (BIC) to provide an independent perspective on the Hobart light rail debate and the need for transport decisions to be made within a broader land use setting framework and on the basis of an agreed assessment process for rapid transit and public transport infrast...