The idea of joined-up mobility services – an app managing all forms of transportation with common ticketing and route planning – was first mooted at least a decade ago and has roots going back a lot further. Yet the concept has been long in gestation and is only now coming to fruition beyond trials, with various challenges still to be resolved. These include reconciliation with broader societal aims including environmental sustainability, integration between the respective transport systems and associated technological platforms and above all the thorny question of making it pay. These problems have dogged early mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) deployments even in China, where centralized control can be exercised with greater force and effectiveness than in most other countries. Few would…