Has the future of mobility arrived yet? Of course, we haven’t reached our final destination, but there are reasons to feel good about our overall progress. A couple cities have made great strides toward the end goal of MaaS, and their successes should serve as examples to other urban areas and regions considering their own next steps.

Whether you live in the Worcester area or the North Shore, in Walpole or Weymouth, when you think about the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Commuter Rail, we tend to have the same thing in mind: going to work in Boston, with trains feeding into two...

It is more than ironic that well into the 21st Century, the one great disruptive change in personal mobility is built upon the increased use of the internal combustion engine. Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) such as Uber and Lyft have become major players in the provision of personal mobility, primarily in urban areas. The problem with TNCs – and I say “problem” because it relates to what I perceive as their most negative impacts – is the essential auto-centric nature of the industry.

How does public information work for people who can’t read information screens? In the US there are over 1.3 million legally blind people, many of whom have difficulty reading public screens, and over 100,000 totally blind people, who often depend on assistive technology like screen readers (which read text on computers out loud). Naturally, public transportation plays a major role in many of their lives.

One of the ironies of the advancements in mobility over the last decade has been the driving force of competition involved – and perhaps no development has affected the recent landscape more than the rise of ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft. Integration is a necessity for the future of mobility, extending to every aspect of the transportation infrastructure. From using one account to pay for journeys with multiple transit agencies to collecting valuable data in one database, the mobility industry will be at its most efficient when it is built upon unified solutions. And as executives, engineers, and thought leaders work for the next developments in mobility, it is imperative to acknowledge that we will only take our largest steps by working together toward integrated solutions.

This is the fifth in a series entitled The Future of Mobility, a joint project of CommonWealth and Meeting of the Minds. It goes without saying that mobility - the movement of people and goods - is an incredibly hot space. Start-ups are cropping up across the entire...

This is the fourth in a series entitled The Future of Mobility, a joint project of CommonWealth and Meeting of the Minds. You wait 20 minutes for a bus, only to watch three show up all at once. Soon after boarding, the glut of vehicles carrying hundreds of commuters...

This is the third in a series entitled The Future of Mobility, a joint project of CommonWealth and Meeting of the Minds. Freedom no longer means sitting behind the wheel of your own car The accelerating changes in transportation have disrupted established services and...