Information or integration? Supporting multimodal travelling through mobility apps

Digital tools like journey planners and mobile ticketing apps are adopted by more and more users and seen as
key enablers to making multimodal travel choices easier. This paper looks at success factors for establishing a
highly integrated mobility app. By analysing and comparing levels of integration across different axes for
mobility apps as well as geographical coverage and user adoption figures, we identify common types and
evolution paths. The findings suggest that vertically integrated apps tend to be limited to one mode and in terms
of geographic coverage. Widely used apps often integrate travel information with other functions and have wider
coverage, but show low vertical integration levels. If increased multimodal travel behaviour is linked to using
mobility apps, then a strategy pursuing wide user adoption may be more successful than building strongly
integrated platforms in the first place. This has implications for public and private initiatives looking to build
their own app or sharing their data and cooperating with others.