Evaluation of an Integrated Intermodal Travel Service

Markus C. Beutel

, Barbara S. Zaunbrecher

Simon Himmel

, Karl-Heinz Krempels

and Martina Zieﬂe

RWTH Aachen University, Information Systems, Aachen, Germany

RWTH Aachen University, Chair and Institute of Communication Science,

Human-Computer Interaction Center, Aachen, Germany

Keywords:

Travel Information, Integration, Service Bundling.

Abstract:

Combining heterogeneous mobility services during one single trip, intermodal traveling is hindered by barriers

on different levels. Especially, by incorporating (electric) sharing services, e.g., car- or bikesharing, complex

travel chains might occur. To provide ﬂexible intermodal mobility to users, integration has to be realized

in various areas: Beyond the provision of comprehensive travel information, it is possible to integrate even

further on the business model level. Within a large ﬁeld test of a comprehensive travel information system,

called Mobility Broker, perceptions towards an integrated offering of heterogeneous mobility services are

examined. Hereby, different services are not only integrated concerning travel information, but also in the area

of distribution. Results indicate that the solution has the potential to deliver extensive ﬂexibility for mobility

users and to lower barriers towards alternative mobility modes. Nevertheless, transparent implementation is

required and capacity issues could form an obstructive bottleneck. Furthermore, data security and privacy

issues could be barriers for widespread acceptance of bundled tariffs.

1 INTRODUCTION

Contemporary mobility and transport modalities have

to meet a variety of criteria, which are difﬁcult to

realize: They must meet community needs, such as

broad accessibility, comfort, safety, sustainability and

affordability. In the past, mobility options were not

interlinked, but today, they must be intermodal, ﬂex-

ible and designed as “door-to-door” mobility chains.

Also, it is becoming increasingly important to inte-

grate users into the design process for new products

to achieve widespread diffusion and market accep-

tance (G

oransson et al., 2004). This is also applicable

to infrastructure planning, in which citizens demand

to participate in decision processes. Thus, the pre-

dominantly technology-centered planning of infras-

tructural mobility concepts, without integrating citi-

zens into the decision making processes, is no longer

viable.

Beside single transitionsBeside single transitions,

e.g., from conventional to electric cars, from cars to

(e-)bikes, from personal to public transfer, a special

focus lies on the improvement of combined solutions:

Intermodal traveling (Spickermann et al., 2014). In-

termodal traveling, which describes the switching of

various heterogeneous modes of transportation during

one single trip (Nobis, 2013), is becoming increas-

ingly popular. Hence, city planners have to consider

comprehensive solutions for urban planning (Zieﬂe

et al., 2014). (Huwer, 2004) investigated beneﬁcial

synergies of combined mobility services. (Digmayer

et al., 2015) especially underline ecological beneﬁts

by incorporating environment-friendly modes, e.g.,

car- or bikesharing. But the utilization of intermodal

traveling is actually affected by barriers on different

levels.

Optimal integration of different mobility services

on comprehensive travel information systems is inves-

tigated in several research projects around the globe

(Beutel et al., 2015; Wells et al., 2013; Rehrl et al.,

2004). On this technical basis, business models have

to be adapted and aligned to new conditions.

Due to the heterogeneity of mobility services, the

integration in the area of distribution is challeng-

ing: sharing services differ substantially in utilization,

payment and tariff assessment base, compared to tra-

ditional public transport services. Moreover, different

and complex tariff systems have to be combined ef-

fectively.

Herewith, we primarily investigate the perceptions

of test persons towards an integrated offer consisting

of heterogeneous mobility services.

Beutel, M., Zaunbrecher, B., Himmel, S., Krempels, K-H. and Zieﬂe, M.

Evaluation of an Integrated Intermodal Travel Service.

In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Smart Cities and Green ICT Systems (SMARTGREENS 2016), pages 363-371

ISBN: 978-989-758-184-7

363

Figure 1: Areas of integration.

The remainder of this work is structured as fol-

lows. Section 2 describes the relevant theoretical ba-

sis. Afterwards, Section 3 studies describes related

work and identiﬁes the research gap. Section 4 de-

scribes the conditions of the conducted ﬁeld test in

detail and presents the results. Finally, Section 5 con-

cludes the work.

2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Intermodal traveling is hindered by various barriers at

different levels. On a technological basis, travel infor-

mation has to be provided via a comprehensive travel

information system. Thereby, travel information sys-

tems vary in extent and functionalities. In addition,

various heterogeneous tariff systems can be combined

on a business model level. Moreover, the mobility ser-

vice infrastructure can be provided in local proximity.

This section presents the relevant theories, con-

cerning the described integration layers (Figure 1).

2.1 (Advanced) Travel Information

Systems

Navigation systems for motorized individual trans-

port and timetable information systems for public

transportation services were initially developed sepa-

rately in form of stand-alone solutions (Rehrl et al.,

2004). Further developed travel information sys-

tems combined these approaches and provided rout-

ing even for buses and trains.

The steadily growing range of emerging trans-

portation modes, their heterogeneity as well as inter-

modal travel behavior demanded more complex and

comprehensive travel information systems. Advanced

travel information systems use information and com-

munication technology to provide travel information

to a wide range of users, who use different modes

of transportation with a diversity of characteristics

(McQueen et al., 2002). The assistance through ad-

vanced travel information systems goes beyond the

provision of information and enables to manage the

complexity of planning, booking and utilization of in-

termodal travel chains (Beul-Leusmann et al., 2013).

Hence, the routing becomes increasingly multi- and

intermodal (Hrncir, 2013). Accordingly, user require-

ments increase and become more divers (Vogelsang

et al., 2015), (Stopka and Fischer, 2015).

These travel information systems have the poten-

tial to optimize the execution in complex transport

networks (McQueen et al., 2002). By fostering the

combination of ecologically friendly modes with pub-

lic transportation services, a reduction of CO

emis-

sions can be achieved (Digmayer et al., 2015).

In principal, there is a large variety of travel in-

formation systems, which differ in range of covered

modes and functionalities. In Germany, famous sys-

tem examples are Qixxit

by Deutsche Bahn and

moovel

Moreover, SUPERHUB combines heterogeneous

mobility services with the help of intermodal routing

(Hrncir, 2013). The offers are additionally provided

via a mobile application. The system uses a ﬂexi-

ble best price solution. Moreover, sustainable mobil-

ity behavior is encouraged by a behavior management

component (Wells et al., 2013).

OLYMPUS

is a B2B-system, that provides ﬂexi-

ble multimodal transport solutions with focus on elec-

tric vehicle sharing (Buchinger et al., 2013). Main

emphasis is the efﬁcient interconnection of sharing in-

frastructures of independent providers to realize syn-

ergy effects and to provide an uniform service to the

users.

2.2 Price Bundling

In principle, the subject bundling is located in the

theoretical ﬁeld of pricing and has been investigated

for decades (Bouwman et al., 2007). With refer-

ence to information systems and web technologies,

the area is called e-Pricing (Brunken, 2010). Price-

bundling is described as the combination of multiple

/https://www.qixxit.de/en/

https://www.moovel.com/en/

http://www.proeftuin-olympus.be/en

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364

identiﬁable products, services or rights of one or mul-

tiple providers, sold via one package-offering with

an aggregated price (Diller, 2008). Price-bundling

is closely interwoven with product-bundling, (Wied-

mann et al., 2001) and describes the combination of

multiple products. As a consequence, bundling incor-

porates both: a product or service assortment-aspect

as well as a price-aspect (Diller, 2008). Hence, the

term service-bundling refers especially to a combina-

tion of services instead of products or goods.

(Kotler, 1999) distinguishes different product lev-

els, e.g., the core product or augmented products, de-

pending on their function for the bundle. Bundling

can be designed and implemented in several forms:

Pure-bundling refers to selling a bundle exclusively.

This means that it is not possible to purchase prod-

uct parts of the bundle separately. In the opposite

scenario, called mixed-bundling, both the bundle and

the individual products are offered. Another form of

bundling are tie-in sales, where the buyer of one main

product agrees to buy one or several complementary

goods, which are necessary to use the main product

(Simon and Wuebker, 1999). There are some addi-

tional forms of bundling, e

. add-on bundling or cross

couponing, which will not be discussed further, be-

cause of their limited applicability in the area of het-

erogeneous mobility services.

Bundling products or services is a widespread

practice (Bouwman et al., 2007; Simon and Wuebker,

1999): Microsoft Ofﬁce combines several ofﬁce ap-

plications, e.g., Word or Excel. Another example are

menus sold by McDonald’s, usually consisting of a

burger, french-fries and a soft drink. These menus

are often sold with a certain discount, compared to

the aggregation of separate prices. Within the areas

of service bundles, (Kr

amer, 2009) investigated the

bundling of telecommunication services.

(Wiedmann et al., 2001) deﬁne a process of an in-

tegrated pricing- and product-strategy, which consists

of the following steps: Determining frame conditions,

identiﬁcation of customer preferences / willingness to

pay, price & product optimization, development of an

integrated price- and product strategy and implemen-

tation.

3 RELATED WORK

(Huwer, 2004) investigated the combination of car-

sharing and public transportation services in two Ger-

man regions, Aachen and Mannheim. In this scenario,

carsharing services were offered as an add-on to pub-

lic transportation. The studies showed, that combined

offers can be beneﬁcial from providers as well as from

customers’ perspective. In particular, new customer

segments could be won.

(Hoffmann et al., 2012) examined some effects

of a combination for public transportation, electronic

car- and bikesharing. They provided a smart card so-

lution, serving as an integrated authorization method.

The tariff consisted of a time based subscription to

public transportation modes, supplemented by a spec-

iﬁed contingent for sharing services. They concluded

that a tariff combination holds big potential to in-

crease user ﬂexibility. Moreover, they underlined pos-

itive user behavioral changes in form of substituting

people’s own cars.

Collectively, (Huwer, 2004) and (Hoffmann et al.,

2012), investigated combined offerings of heteroge-

neous mobility services. Their holistic studies also

incorporated the pricing area, but without addressing

any price biases. (Wirtz, 2014) especially focused on

the effects of ﬂexible tariffs of public transportation

modes, provided by electronic fare management sys-

tems. The author examined signiﬁcant psychological

effects of ﬂat-rate-offerings, inﬂuencing the mobility

behavior.

This work distinguishes itself from the described

contributions primarily concerning the travel informa-

tion system, Mobility Broker, which constitutes the

central part of the following studies. The main em-

phasis is on system features considering the distribu-

tion of heterogeneous mobility services, incorporat-

ing an integrated booking, accounting and pricing.

4 FIELD TEST

To examine user’s perceptions from manifold per-

spectives, we conducted a ﬁeld test, consisting of two

phases. Within these phases, qualitative as well as

quantitative data on user’s perceptions were collected.

The test was conducted by using the comprehensive

travel information system “Mobility Broker”, whose

architecture and functionalities are described in (Beu-

tel et al., 2015) using the IXSI interface (Kluth et al.,

2015). The system allows to query, book and uti-

lize heterogeneous modes of transportation of inde-

pendent mobility providers. Moreover, integrated ac-

counting functionalities for intermodal travel chains

are provided. Speciﬁc test conditions and results are

presented in the following chapters.

4.1 Prerequisites and Conditions

In August 2015, the mobility station at RWTH Uni-

versity Campus successfully opened for an initial test

phase. The station locally combines electronic car-

Evaluation of an Integrated Intermodal Travel Service

365

Figure 2: Impressions of a test user, interacting with the system at the campus’ mobility station.

and bikesharing as well as public transportation ser-

vices. Within this phase, services were provided by

ASEAG (local public transportation services com-

pany) as well as VeloCity Aachen (local e-bikesharing

services). Participants had the possibility to use two

e-cars and up to four e-bikes, connected to respec-

tive charging stations. In addition, the participants’

access card enabled them to use public transport ser-

vices (bus).

In a second, constitutive test phase, we observed

14 test users in more detail. We selected participants

under the premise of possession of, or access to an

android smart-phone device and regular presence (oc-

cupationally or study related) in the area of the pro-

vided mobility services. Figure 2 depicts some im-

pressions of test users, interacting with the mobility

services at the mobility station. This test setting en-

abled the users to become familiar with the system on

the one hand and on the other hand, allowed to gain

valuable qualitative insights.

After registration, a key card and an authorization

PIN were provided to each participant. In addition,

the obligatory front-end mobile application, devel-

oped by RegioIT GmbH and RWTH Aachen Univer-

sity for android smartphones, was provided as well.

Beyond the querying, intermodal trip planning, book-

ing and reservation of services, the application al-

lowed to check actual mobility quotas.

During two introductory test days, users had to

complete the following use cases, accompanied by

the researchers: Small groups, consisting of two per-

sons each, initially had to query for available services

around them. After checking the bikesharing capac-

ities, they had to unlock, use and return an e-bike

by smart card and mobile application. Thereupon,

probands had to use the e-smarts with the mobile ap-

plication and the smart card as well. In the process

users especially learned to (dis-)connect the vehicle

as well as the authorization at the respective charging

station. Following the introductory days, participants

had the possibility to use the system for the duration

of 4 weeks. In principal, this usage was free of charge,

but it was recommended to consider a provided mo-

bility test quota.

4.2 Field Test Results

In the following, ﬁrst the qualitative results from com-

ments of the test users are presented, followed by the

quantitative data gathered from a survey among test

users.

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366

Table 1: Qualitative evaluation results.

System Functionalities

• “The system informs me. Hence, I include more possibilities into my decision process (...).”

• “I could use routes I had not known before.”

• “You don’t have to go to a station to check for capacities.”

• “Need to implement the functionality to display vehicle battery status.”

• “As a result of misinformation (caused by wrong predictions / false capacity notiﬁcations), the trust into the

system disappears and the usage decreases.”

• “(...) i wished for an centralized feedback portal to avoid contacting employees every time.”

• “More information concerning actual travels with notiﬁcations etc..”

• “Problem: user data is handed to other providers.”

Services

• “I use different services than before, e.g., bikesharing.”

• “I am more inclined to switch from my own car to car- and bikesharing.”

• “More frequent switches of used modes.”

• “(...) The right mode of transportation every time, depending on the current requirements.”

• “Larger reach for electronic cars needed, to reach destinations that are far away.”

• “Bikes need porter and bicycle lock.”

• “Integration of parking services/space into the system!”

• “Easier/ faster unlocking of e-cars needed.”

Pricing

• “With an integrated tariff, I personally would use more modes that before and maybe use car- and bikeshar-

ing more consciously.”

• “Tariffs for bikesharing are more attractive in warmer seasons.”,

• “Better overview of available quotas.”

• “More different tariffs to choose between would be desirable.”

Infrastructure

• “More stations for car- and bikesharing needed.”

• “Carsharing stations need more lighting.”

• “(...) relatively ﬂexible and spontaneous decision making, under the circumstances that the infrastructure

is suitably developed.”

Qualitative Results

First, the qualitative results from the test group are

presented. For evaluation purposes we categorized

the participants’ responses and summarized them in

Table 1. Test-persons had the possibility to respond to

open survey questions if the information systems in-

ﬂuences their mobility behavior, if their had positive

or negative experiences and if their had critics and re-

marks.

Concerning the system integration, users espe-

cially stated the centralized travel information as a

main advantage: Various responses, e.g, “The system

informs me. Hence, I include more possibilities into

my decision process (...).” indicate that comprehen-

sive travel information results in a more varied mobil-

ity behaviour. One person remarked especially “(...)

relatively ﬂexible and spontaneous decision making,

under the circumstances, that the infrastructure is suit-

ably developed.” However, possible drawbacks were

identiﬁed, too: “As a result of misinformation (caused

by wrong predictions / false capacity notiﬁcations),

the trust into the system disappears and the usage de-

creases.”

Concerning the transportation services, more

speciﬁcally concerning the e-cars, faster and easier

unlocking was required. In addition, test persons re-

quired a larger range for the electric vehicles. With

reference to the e-bikes a test person commended that

a “porter and a bicycle lock” would be useful. Even

the integration of available parking space was stated

as a desirable additional service.

With a tariff bundle, one person “(...) would use

Evaluation of an Integrated Intermodal Travel Service

367

more modes than before and maybe use car- and bike-

sharing more conscious”. Test persons stated, that

personalized (and seasonal) price bundles would be

beneﬁcial.

Quantitative Results

In addition to the qualitative research, we conducted

a survey to quantify perceptions and opinions of par-

ticipants. The survey aimed exclusively at partici-

pants of the test phases. 37 persons responded in to-

tal. Because of partially incomplete surveys, up to 29

datasets were usable for quantitative evaluations. 7

of the test persons were female, 22 were male. The

majority of participants (55.2%) were students. Con-

cerning the usual mobility behavior, 41.4% stated not

to use carsharing. Even more (55.2%) do not already

use bikesharing yet.

In a ﬁve point Likert scale, (1= very negative, 5=

very positive), we asked test- persons how they eval-

uate the integration of heterogeneous transportation

services on the basis of information systems. In gen-

eral, 24 of 27 persons evaluate the integration posi-

tively or very positively. Especially the system Mobil-

ity Broker is evaluated positively or very positively by

19 of 26 test persons. This could possibly be a result

of the prototypical status of the system and the lim-

ited infrastructure so far. Moreover, 62.5% of the par-

ticipants evaluate service bundles positively or very

positively.

In addition, we asked, if test-persons agree on be-

ing more open towards speciﬁc modes of transporta-

tion after using the system (ﬁve point Likert scale,

1=totally disagree, 5= completely agree). 22 of 28

persons state to be more open (rather agree or com-

pletely agree) towards carsharing services after using

the system. Similar results were evaluated for bike-

sharing services (21 of 28 test-persons). Asked if

test-persons agree on preferring to pay mobility ser-

vices separately, the majority (60.0%) does not tend

to do so (rather agree or completely agree). Answer-

ing a Yes or No- decision, 62.0% think that the quotas

should not be bound monthly. Moreover, test-persons

had to state their preferred quota for sharing services

in one month. The required average budget for bike-

sharing is 18.9 hours per month, for carsharing 20.2

hours and 154.4 kilometers per month.

Central part of the survey is the evaluation of se-

lected aspects of integration, depicted in ﬁgure Figure

3. The Figure shows the importance of test-persons

towards speciﬁc aspects, which was asked via a ﬁfe

step Likert scale from very important to completely

unimportant. It is remarkable, that the basic degree

of importance of all investigated aspects is high. This

indicates that the general topic of integration in the

intermodal context is highly relevant for test-persons.

However, ”integrated user data” presents an exception

to this general trend, which could be due to increased

sensitivity of users towards issues of privacy and se-

curity.

In general, services can be priced depending on

the actual use or alternatively via an ﬁxed price. Ten-

dencies towards a ﬁxed price / ﬂat rate solution can

be observed. This phenomenon is called ﬂat rate bias.

This tendency can not be explained exclusively de-

pending on the characteristics of usage, but rather on

beneﬁcial effects, that go beyond the simple monetary

value of the services (Wirtz, 2014). Various scientiﬁc

studies investigated price biases in manifold service

sectors before (Stingel, 2008), (Wirtz, 2014), (Tobies,

2009).

Because of the prototypical system status, inves-

tigation of changes in use as an result of a speciﬁc

pricing measure seem not reliable for this particular

case. Therefore, the focus in this work has so far been

on motivational aspects. However, to get an idea of

the possible effects of a ﬂat-rate offer in the context

of integrated mobility solutions, the price bias was in-

vestigated preliminarily. Our studies rely on the bias

declaration construct by (Wirtz, 2014), who investi-

gated the following effects: An insurance effect rep-

resents the fact, that a customer appreciates, a ﬁxed

price which is not as volatile as prices depending on

the actual usage. The items used in the questionnaire

are formulated accordingly to (Wirtz, 2014), with lit-

tle adjustments due to the new context. For the insur-

ance effect, we used the formulation ”I prefer to be

safe and pay the ﬁxed price. For this, it is never go-

ing to be more expensive.”. Moreover, a ﬁxed price

allows to spontaneously increase the usage of mobil-

ity services without a signiﬁcant increase of the costs.

According to speciﬁc theories, costs weight differ-

ently, depending on the point of time, at which they

occur. In case of ﬂexible tariffs, costs occur promptly

and are perceived more grave, whereas the paying of

ﬁxed tariffs is more pleasant, which is described as

the taximeter effect. With the item ”Would the price

not be ﬁxed, I constantly would try to save a trip.

This would be stressfull and take too much time.”

the taxameter effect had been evaluated. A reason-

able choice among prices can only occur even if all

relevant information is present. The convenience ef-

fects represents the value of ﬁxed prices for the cus-

tomer, who do not have to collect and compare vari-

ous prices of heterogeneous mobility services. There-

fore, we used the formulation ”The effort to deter-

mine the cheapest price, normally is not worth it.”.

Finally, the self-discipline-effect describes the desire

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368

Figure 3: Importance of selected integration factors.

to change the actual consuming behavior, which was

evaluated with the item ”In case of paying a ﬁxed

price, I potentially would chose other destinations as

usual and travel to them via different modes of trans-

portation.”. All items were evaluated in a ﬁfe step lik-

ert scale, starting from totally disagreement to com-

plete agreement as well as providing two gradations

and a undecided-option.

Concerning the investigated service bundles, sur-

vey results show that there is some agreement con-

cerning insurance (48.1% agreement, n=27), taxame-

ter (48.1% agreement, n=27) and self-discipline ef-

fects (59.3% agreement, n=27) in the multimodal

context. Only the convenience effect is estimated sig-

niﬁcantly weaker (22.2% agreement, n=27). These

results incorporate rather agreement and complete

agreement of test-persons. This indicates that test-

persons tend to be price conscious concerning the in-

corporated modes of transportation. A possible ex-

planation could be that a majority of test-persons

were students, who already possess a student-ticket

for public transportation services.

5 DISCUSSION

This study examined perceptions of test persons qual-

itatively as well as quantitatively, in a usage-context

concerning an integration of heterogeneous mobility

services, based on the travel information system Mo-

bility Broker.

In general, results underline that all investigated

aspects of integration are important to the test per-

sons. This indicates that mobility providers should

pay attention to this topic and cooperate to satisfy the

need of an heterogeneous mobility behavior free from

barriers on different levels.

Various sources have underlined the beneﬁcial po-

tential of combined mobility services (Huwer, 2004;

Hoffmann et al., 2012). The ﬁeld test and the survey

underline these results by showing that participants

were more aware of options such as car- and bike-

sharing and also more motivated to use them. This

was shown in the comments as well as the quantita-

tive survey. In this respect, it could be shown that

the bundled tariffs can play an important role for the

promotion of new mobility concepts and modes of

transport (sharing models and electromotive). How-

ever, the ﬁeld test also exposed disadvantages and

challenges of price bundling for mobility tariffs that

could possibly hinder the widespread acceptance of

such tariffs. It has become clear that the participants

need to make a trade-off between the convenience

of getting information, booking and billing via one

platform and privacy, by giving away their personal

data to several providers of mobility services at once.

Furthermore, their mobility usage needs to be moni-

tored in a scenario where they buy particular “mobil-

ity budgets” (range or time), which could raise data

security and privacy issues. The participants also re-

quested more transparent information on various lev-

els, e.g. a battery display for e-bikes and a notiﬁca-

tion when they reached the limit of their prepaid mo-

bility budget. For the use of social networks, it has

been shown that misuse of personal data is something

that concerns users, and that this was independent of

perceived control over one’s data (Kowalewski et al.,

2015). Although mobility services are not connected

to personal data like personal preferences for prod-

ucts, photos and videos (as it is the case in social net-

works), the fear of data misuse might also affect mo-

bility platforms with bundled services. Future studies

Evaluation of an Integrated Intermodal Travel Service

369

will therefore need to evaluate how providing of in-

formation and control of data to the users affects ac-

ceptance of mobility tariffs. Concerning the bundled

travel information, usability will become an impor-

tant issue, as complexity increases with the amount of

information displayed, especially on mobile devices

(Habermann et al., 2015). When looking at the effects

of ﬂatrate tickets, participants overall did not agree

that it was too tiresome to look for a cheap tariff and

choosing the ﬂatrate instead. This could be an effect

of the relatively young sample, who were mostly stu-

dents and therefore typically do not have an income

of their own yet. They might therefore be more cost-

conscious. This shows that special pricing models for

different target groups might be needed, according to

different user requirements. A further issue examined

referred to the validity of the mobility budget: When

tariffs are created in the way that the mobility bud-

get, e.g. kilometers bought for car-sharing usage, is

cut at the end of the month, this might lead to several

problems: All users who have not used up their bud-

get until the end of the month might want to use car-

sharing in the last days of the month to make the most

of their tariff. This might cause capacity problems

when no more cars are available, which in turn could

cause frustration among users. This tariff-design was

unattractive for almost two thirds of our test-users.

Alternatively, packages of kilometers and time could

be offered which do not expire after one month, but

can be used over a longer period of time. This result

further illustrates that care has to be taken with regard

to the details of the tariff design, considering possible

limits of the infrastructure as well as user preferences.

5.1 Limitations and Future Work

Concerning the ﬁeld test, the mobility services some-

times were not available for limited times because of

the prototypical status of the system. Many responses

of participants referred to the limited test area. Future

research promises valuable ﬁndings with an extended

infrastructure, covering more of the surrounding area.

This would indeed increase the usefulness of the spe-

ciﬁc services for the users. As another consequence

of the prototypical status of the system, we created the

described ﬁeld test free of any charges. Speciﬁc pay-

ment of the services could possibly inﬂuence some of

the results. Interesting future studies could investigate

the exact changes of the mobility behavior, depending

on selected service bundles.

As other studies show, people’s preferences

may vary among different user groups (Zieﬂe and

Wilkowska, 2015). Hence, investigating other spe-

ciﬁc groups of users is necessary as well.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was partially funded by German Federal

Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy for the

project Mobility Broker (01ME12136) as well as the

Excellence Initiative of the German State and Federal

Government (Project Urban Future Outline). The au-

thors thank Velocity UHG, IVU Trafﬁc Technologies

AG, RegioIT GmbH and ASEAG for the industrial

cooperation. Especially, we thank Birgit Brand, Wal-

ter Eßer, Anais Habermann and Katharina Finke for

their valuable support.

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