Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2020 | Page 45

impact study on the current state of MaaS. In
the study, Ramboll analyzed data of 70,000
registered users based on Whim’s first oper-
ating year in Helsinki.
The study’s key findings indicate
that public transportation is the backbone
of MaaS. For instance, Whim users make
73% of their trips with public transportation
compared to 48% trips made by the average
citizen – and 42% of all Whim users’ city
bike trips are combined with public trans-
portation.
In addition, Whim users are steeped
in multimodalism, using both bicycles and
taxis to solve the ‘first mile - last mile’ prob-
lem. Whim customers deploy a wide range
of transportation services, and they are
clearly shifting to sustainable mobility pat-
terns, which is likely to have a major impact
on city congestion and car dependency, the
study finds.
Interface Only
Whim has sometimes been called “the Net-
flix of transportation”, but Sampo Hietanen
has noted there is a big difference: while
Netflix produces many of its shows them-
selves, MaaS Global only produces the
interface, not any of the services. Hietanen
admits that nothing in this world was built
for MaaS, and the company has to battle
through both red tape and old habits to con-
quer new markets.
In his CEO blog, Hietanen writes that
making MaaS work does not mean just
tweaking the app. “We must tweak the world
too, the way our partners cooperate and the
way business ecosystems are structured.”
In Hietanen’s view, the world of trans-
portation is going through disruption that
is technology-enabled but, fundamentally,
demand-driven. According to him, when
there is “clear and present urge” from the
public, the MaaS revolution is not a ques-
tion of if, but a question of when – and the
time might very well be right now. l
Sami J. Anteroinen
Nordicum 45