Nobina, the Nordics’ largest public transport company, has announced a shutdown of its Mobility as a Service (MaaS) platform, Travis. The move comes at the end of an ambitious digital effort which sought to bundle up different types of sustainable transport into one bundle for commuters in Sweden.
Introduced in 2019, Travis was marketed as a single platform for multimodal trip planning, booking, and payment, including public transport combined with electric scooters, taxis, and car pools. It enabled users to purchase tickets for Västtrafik and SL (Stockholm Public Transport) year after year, offered real-time travel information, and collaborated with several urban mobility providers.
Even though they attained more than 500,000 downloads for the app, selling 4 million tickets, and maintaining more than 35,000 monthly active users, Nobina indicated that long-term business viability and public interest were absent.
“Today we have made the tough and sad decision to phase out Travis,” Nobina Sweden’s Marketing Director Magnus af Petersens stated. “Although we are convinced about our faith in Mobility as a Service and its potential in sustainable urban mobility, the market conditions have not made it possible for us to make further investments.”
Res i STHLM app, acquired by Nobina in 2015 and remaining an essential trip planner for the commuters of Stockholm, will remain unchanged. The app, used by more than 300,000 individual users, offers up-to-date information and features such as “Where is the bus?” and the “Right boarding point” when traveling on the metro in Stockholm.
The phasing out of Travis will be seamless. Users who hold valid but unused tickets will be eligible for refunds. Nobina has assured a seamless transition and that all current users are informed and supported during the closure.
And so with the end of Travis, but Nobina’s statement reflects the subtlety of creating sustainable digital public transport environments. Others would be welcomed by the company to take up the baton in propelling MaaS development in Sweden and elsewhere.
