Hunting in a pack? Interrogating the publicness of Mobility as a Service in Brussels

Abstract

As policymakers and scholars continue to claim that the future of urban mobility is ‘smart’, the idea of ‘Mobility as a Service’ (MaaS) has been interpreted as a solution to key mobility-related problems. In this paper we identify an urgent need to interrogate diverse scenarios of MaaS to uncover their implications for public transport, as well as broader goals of transport policy. Literature on MaaS to date has considered the potential risks that its diverse forms may pose for accessibility and sustainability when blackboxed within an imperative for technological modernisation. We build on this work through the alternative normative framing of publicness, focusing on the case of the Brussels-Capital Region. Empirically, our research reveals an unstable web of normativities and rationalities that surround MaaS yet do not fall into a private/public dichotomy. Their crystallisation remains hampered by strategies of discursive hedging rather than claims to longer-term goals. We observe that MaaS stakeholders engage in subtle discursive strategies to relativise what counts as public transport, while they avoid overt positioning as its competitors. Methodologically and theoretically, we suggest that combining discourse analysis with a normative claim to publicness can enable purpose-led, critical engagement with transport technologies without foreclosing their potential opportunities.