The next step on the road to a full MaaS

Challenge / Goal

To help passengers plan their trips the BKK FUTÁR application was launched in 2014. This application was using live GPS data provided by the public transport vehicles. In January 2022, FUTÁR allowed customers to plan their trips with suburban railway lines operated by the national railway company (MAV). This feature was a breakthrough for the city, since it was the first time that users  were able to plan their trips with different transportation modes operated by different companies. However due to the lack of integration with BKK’s services, the number of people using these lines remained lower than expected. With a more integrated Mobility as a Service (MaaS) system, the city aims to establish an integrated platform that serves as a base to access all essential mobility functions. CASE STUDY: Budapest – Next step on the road to a full MaaS

The main challenges faced are:
• The segregation of the existing online platforms – each service providers offer their own platforms to their services that tend to cause confusions and misunderstandings to travellers, e.g in terms of ticketing, MÁV (the national railway company) and Volánbusz (the national public bus transport company) services have their own ticket types and fares compared to BKK bus services and their tickets can be purchased on their own websites.
• Commuters using various transport service providers must be supported with integrated tickets and passes to make purchases easily manageable.
• The lack of navigation opportunities in the currently existing application. Many of the functions will require additional resources and
development either in the infrastructure, or in the backend of the software.

Innovation Developed

Within FastTrack, the team from Budapest focused on public and shared mobility and multi-modal hubs by further developing the mobility-points approach, with a focus on the software side (MaaS) and on integration with public transport.

In February 2022, FUTAR was renewed and changed its name to BudapestGO. The application was renewed with several new features: besides journey planning, the app offers a simple and quick solution for ticket purchasing. The widget is one of the most popular convenience features, according to customer feedback, allowing passengers to place a ticket or pass on their phone’s home screen with a single swipe and have it at their fingertips. In March, the app counted more than 1 million users and more than 6,5 million purchased tickets and monthly passes. Thanks to the automatic pass renewal option, the passenger will always have a valid pass without having to remember the expiry date.

In May 2022, new features were added to BudapestGO, making the app even better and more accurate for cyclists, and the Telebusz and Telefogas on-demand bus and cogwheel-railway services were also made available. Trips can be planned with private bikes, public bikes or with the option to change between bike and public transportation during the trip. The location of stations and bikes of the public bike share system, called MOL Bubi is also available in the application. However, users cannot pick up bicycles directly using BudapestGO, they need to switch to MOL Bubi application for that. In addition, since January 2023, users are able to plan trips and buy tickets for the suburban buses operated by the national bus company (Volanbusz). In the future, BKK would like to further improve BudapestGO. For example, to have a more direct integration between public and private shared mobility service providers.

The most crucial and urgent functions, where the appropriate regulations have already been considered are planned to be implemented in the near future, such as:
• Link to make a reservation/purchase
• Combined static route planning
• Filters for various vehicle types
• Pre-arranged mobility packs
• Integrated payment