MaaS with a social conscience

When Mobility as a Service first became a newsworthy development in the early 2010s, one of its attractive features was how it focused on inclusivity, perhaps more than any other breakthrough solution had previously done.

One of MaaS’s main USPs was that it wasn’t just a mobility subscription service aimed at persuading people to leave their cars at home and make more journeys by bike or on foot or by public transport, it also demanded that those living in underserved, rural, even isolated communities would have access to the transport network.

Fast forward to 2025 and the notion of MaaS with a social conscience is still very much alive and well and, in one case in particular, changing people’s lives in the North East of England. 

“I think the very definition of Mobility as a Service means that we're looking at various different modes of transport and the most effective way of potentially getting around” says Terry Yoell, co-founder and CEO of Flock Mobility, “The people that can afford to do this don't want to because inevitably, taking multiple modes of transport is going to be just a little bit more work than they'd like it to be.” This scenario, of course, has long been the bête noire of the MaaS sector.

“It means that anyone with any real money is just going to get into their big SUV and go wherever it is they need to go. It's only the people who don't have those big SUVs that would be a candidate for MaaS. It's going to be people who currently have difficulty getting around that are going to be most open to the idea of us providing some sort of journey planning for them so they can get where they need to go.”

“It's going to be people who currently have difficulty getting around that are going to be most open to the idea of us providing some sort of journey planning for them so they can get where they need to go”

One vehicle, multiple uses

Edinburgh-based Flock’s approach to solving the conundrum is appealingly unique and fits perfectly into the dimensions of ‘smart mobility.’ By enabling a single EV to be used for multiple purposes throughout the day, vehicle utilisation is increased, in turn providing significant cost savings and reducing carbon emissions. 

From a Mobility as a Service provider’s perspective, the segments of society that are of most interest to Flock are local authorities and hospitals who are, essentially, responsible for ensuring that people who have difficulty arranging their own transport as the aforementioned SUV drivers are still able to get to and from appointments, interviews or even surgeries.

“Some people are just not able to access the existing public transport network so there’s the potential where we can make it more efficient and more cost effective and still manage to pick passengers up in those rural locations.” 

“Some people are just not able to access the existing public transport network so there’s the potential where we can make it more efficient and more cost effective and still manage to pick passengers up in those rural locations”

The height of convenience

One of the oft-quoted stumbling blocks to the widespread implementation of MaaS (together with it being ahead of its time) was that in general people don’t like change and that to convince millions of drivers to not drive on a regular basis but to purchase a mobility subscription package was verging on the impossible. Serial entrepreneur Yoell has another theory.

“You will never have it more convenient than you have it today, but that's the reason we've got the problems we do. It’s the reason we have congestion, because we've just tried to be as convenient as possible, like having your own private car in your driveway and being able to get from A to B. In fairness,” he prepares to admit, “I am a MaaS provider, and I still enjoy having my own vehicle in my driveway. People are reluctant to give that up.”

“You will never have it more convenient than you have it today, but that's the reason we've got the problems we do. It’s the reason we have congestion, because we've just tried to be as convenient as possible”

So from a societal point of view, Yoell’s fleet management platform answers many of the pressing smart mobility questions that desperately need addressing in these turbulent financial times.

 

“In terms of societal benefits, how are you reducing your CO2 emissions? How are you saving costs for the authority? From the hospital perspective, you have to reduce your emissions and you have to reduce your costs, because the NHS don't have money to spend. So how can we do that in a more efficient manner? Well, here comes MaaS. We can offer demand-responsive shared rides when required and other services, such as courier deliveries, car share or dynamic shuttles at other times of the day.”

Electric fleets and a friendly chat

It's a project with the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in the North East of England where Flock Mobility have had notable success. It’s a fleet management solution for the Royal Victoria Infirmary and the Freeman Hospital, together with renal clinics in North Shields and Gateshead, with the majority of patients largely coming in for dialysis, implemented 10 months ago, that is saving the NHS huge sums of money with an additional, perhaps unexpected, societal benefit.

Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Trust’s EV fleet

“We can flex the fleet to offer various services at different times of the day. Shared patient transport at certain times, then courier deliveries and even dynamic staff shuttles between the various hospitals. We’re also looking at offering shared staff commute to ease congestion in the parking areas.  Staff need to get between the hospitals at certain times of the day. We allocate those same vehicles. They can book a seat between the hospitals and we’re looking at the staff commute as an additional option.”

"We can flex the fleet to offer various services at different times of the day. Shared patient transport at certain times, then courier deliveries and even dynamic staff shuttles between the various hospitals”

Just one department of the Trust was spending hundreds of thousands of pounds every year on paying for taxis for patients, picking them up from home and then another taxi would be called in order to take them home again.

“The initial challenge was that they had had private taxis for the past two years, bringing them in for appointments and back home again every two or three days. We introduced the concept of shared electric transport, and it was absolute chaos originally as people really didn't want to share with other people and, inevitably with Mobility as a Service, the word sharing is quite key. Look at all the statistics in Europe, especially from the likes of BlaBla Car, they were off the charts in terms of their usage in France, for example, especially when there were train strikes. You go and look in Germany and different areas of Europe, amazing. But in the UK it's a fraction of that.”

However, just 10 months into the scheme some 70% of patients surveyed said that one of the greatest things about the service was the fact that they get to share their journeys with other patients.  

“Now it's actually all bout that social interaction with the individuals in the vehicle for them. It's about the fact that the driver gets to know them, and it's not just some random individual anymore, but actually, for some of them, it's the only time during the day in which they get to be social. So even when they're in dialysis, a lot of them are sleeping. They're on their phones watching movies. It's very quiet. Social interaction is still limited in the clinics, even if they're there for four hours, but in the vehicle, it’s very different story.”

The numbers don’t lie

Initial figures suggest that the scheme is saving up to two tons per vehicle of carbon emissions per month, and that is just for the renal department. 

“We could provide further savings by looking at other optimizations, other departments in between the renal pickup and drop offs,” adds Yoell, “so now we're doing home ventilation equipment deliveries from a courier perspective, in between the renal patient pickups and drop offs, using the same electric vehicles.

“We've got nurses who are using the vehicles to drive themselves to and from patient visits and when we look at the downtime of those vehicles, like on a Saturday, there’s very little usage. We're able to bring those vehicles that are dedicated to the nurses into the renal department and we can get volunteers to drive them and save an extra £50,000,” he continues. “It’s just increasing the utilization but there are massive cost- and CO2-savings, two of the biggest things that the hospitals are looking at.”

”We've got nurses who are using the vehicles to drive themselves to and from patient visits and when we look at the downtime of those vehicles, like on a Saturday, there’s very little usage”

The foresight displayed by the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is not always replicated by other authorities and Yoell concludes with a cautionary note around the concept of demand responsive transport.

“I think one of the biggest problems is that some of the local authorities have thought, ‘we'll just replace the scheduled bus services with demand responsive transport’ where it should have been a complemented service. MaaS is not there to replace but to complement,” he says, encapsulating the whole ethos of Mobility as a Service.  

Newcastle Victoria Infirmary

“You can’t say ‘We’ll do away with the buses, we can save hundreds of thousands of pounds. We'll geofence that area, and we'll still say there's a service available, but it's costing us much less.’ The problem with that is the elderly lady who relies on picking up the 9am bus every morning can no longer do that because quite often, with demand responsive transport, that vehicle might not now be available. Ideally we need a complimentary service at certain times of the day, we need these buses but at other times of the day you can successfully operate a demand responsive system, because you don't have quite the same demand.”