UbiGo
Basic Information
Language
Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
Latest update
Price
The UbiGo service will be run by a local / regional commercial (franchising) partner, i.e. the customer will pay for the service, not cities.
Application time
6-12 months, mostly due to contractual negotiations. The IT-platform is multilingual.
Assistance required
UbiGo Innovation Ltd will support the local partner to set up the service, including IT, business, marketing etc.
Assistance data
A possibility to be a reseller of public transport services and open PT data.
Tool type
Method / Approach Mobile app Other Software
Application area
- Appraisal and assessment
- Financing, procurement, legal aspects, measure implementation
- Evaluation and monitoring
- Exploitation and business plans
- Other
Target Audience
- Medium-sized cities
- Large cities
- Metropolitan regions
Summary
UbiGo is a fully integrated mobility service for everyday travel (or Mobility as a Service, MaaS). It aims to make everyday life easier for urban households and foster sustainable cities by offering a simple, flexible, reliable and affordable service as an alternative to car ownership.
UbiGo works like a flexible mobile phone subscription, but with units for use of mobility services, rather than the number of SMS sent or Gigabytes surfed. The service combines public transport, car-sharing, rental car service, taxi and a bicycle system – all in one smartphone app, all on one invoice, with 24/7 support and bonus points for sustainable transport choices.
By taking care of households’ or companies’ mobility budgets, UbiGo can procure everyday travel in volume, repackage and deliver combined mobility to users in a unified way.
The UbiGo service and business model has been developed and tested in Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest city with 70 paying households for half a year. The thorough evaluation by Chalmers University showed very good results - in terms of changed behaviour, user satisfaction and possibility to sustain a reasonable profitable business.
In May 2015, UbiGo received the OECD International Transport Forum’s award for Promising Innovation. A relaunch will be made in Sweden/Stockholm at the end of 2017 as part of the H2020 CIVITAS ECCENTRIC project. Discussions with potential partners are ongoing in other countries, focussing on supporting them in establishing local or regional services based on the UbiGo concept and platform in other large cities.
Good Example
The UbiGo service was developed and tested by 70 paying households in Gothenburg as part of the Go:smart project. Partners included Volvo, Chalmers university, City of Gothenburg, Viktoria institute and Västtrafik. Most customers wanted to continue using the service even if it was in a beta version, the main reason being convenience. Users changed their mode of transport and travel chains. User saying that they were very satisfied with their overall transport situation went from 15% to 50%. Published papers can be found on www.ubigo.me.
