Mobility service platforms: Cross-company cooperation for transportation service interoperability

The growing number of modes of transportation with diverse characteristics and situational suitability would allow a multifaceted mobility behavior. Unfortunately, the usage of a combination of heterogeneous modes of transportation - specifically during a complex travel chain with multiple changeovers - is hindered in various ways. Users have to query, compare, combine, book and use multiple specialized mobility service individually which results in inefficiencies both on demand and supply side. Centralized mobility service platforms can form a technological bridge to deliver service interoperability. In cross section between competition and cooperation, the need for suitable, profitable, and sustainable market forms to provide complex service configurations arises. As a result of interdisciplinary workshops with domain experts, we describe a role relationship model and identify relevant market forms. To do so, we present a conceptional tool to analyze, characterize and differentiate various mobility service platforms and apply it to set of platforms currently beeing developed.