Is Your Country Ready for Urban Air Mobility?

Aviation engineers, manufacturers, urban planners, vertiport builders and operators, and regulators are rapidly approaching the day when eVTOLs will take to the skies, passengers in tow, ready to taxi them from airports to city centers and back or from a city’s south side to its north or the suburbs surrounding a metropolis.

But, one key question remains: Is your city ready to support this revolutionary new mode of transportation? That’s what Tabea Fian and Georg Hauger, researchers at the Institute for Transportation System Planning, Vienna University of Technology, in Vienna, Austria seek to answer with the tool they’ve developed, the Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) Index or MSI. The MSI seeks to quantitatively capture the economic, social, technological, and infrastructural conditions relevant to MaaS implementation. Their methodology includes four steps: identifying relevant mobility markets, defining mobility market metrics, integrating macroeconomic metrics, and deriving the MSI formula.

A standardized index using country-specific mobility markets and other economic indicators could be the key to unlocking an objective assessment of a region’s readiness for urban air mobility (UAM). By monitoring and evaluating a country’s economic, social, technological, and infrastructural conditions over several years, Fian and Hauger believe those responsible for the successful development and implementation of MaaS can effectively and efficiently usher in this new era in aviation transportation.

A review of existing MaaS indices reveals the need for a standardised index incorporating country-specific mobility market indicators and economic metrics. This study proposes the creation of a quantitative MaaS Status Index (MSI) based on statistical analyses of country-specific mobility markets and additional economic indicators. The hypothesis is that a comprehensive range of financial and macroeconomic indicators reflect a country’s economic, social, technological, and infrastructural conditions. Monitoring and evaluating these indicators over several years can indicate the development of a country’s mobility system, particularly concerning MaaS.

The methodology includes four steps: identifying relevant mobility markets, defining mobility market metrics, integrating macroeconomic metrics, and deriving the MSI formula. Comparing the MSI values in Figure 1 versus Figure 2 reflects a robust period of growth in the recent past few years which will transition to a steady growth period in the coming years.

Supportive socio-economic conditions are critical for MaaS adoption. High rates of urbanization, a younger demographic, and strong GDP per capita contribute to higher MSI values. These factors indicate that urban areas with a tech-savvy population and robust economic conditions are more likely to embrace MaaS solutions effectively, the study concludes.

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