Source: Zag Daily

Oslo achieves an EU first in the Mobility as a Service (Maas) sector, integrating bike sharing into its official public transport app as part of the MOVE21 project.

The Norwegian capital’s achievement comes thanks to a unique collaboration between Oslo’s public transport authority Ruter and global micromobility software platform Urban Sharing. With the Ruter app you are now able to locate your nearest bike share station in real time, check bike availability, hire with in-app payment, and unlock and start riding immediately.

How was integration achieved?

Urban Sharing onboarded the Oslo City Bike scheme onto its platform back in 2018. During a three-year development period, Ruter managed the front-end design of the app whilst Urban Sharing developed the unique Application Programming Interface (API) with all the necessary endpoints to make the app run smoothly. In 2023, the first of three roll-out phases began, with Ruter first testing the app to see if the integrated bike share offering worked for 500 users, eventually rolling out to 10,000 users, before updating the public transport app for its entire customer base.

What is MOVE21?

MOVE21 is an EU-funded innovation project that aims for participating cities to achieve a 30% reduction in transport-related emissions by 2030. The project supports cities to become zero-emission nodes for mobility and logistics through 15 unique initiatives. These initiatives are tried and tested on the ground in three Living Labs that are central to the project: Oslo, Gothenburg, and Hamburg. Three replicator cities – Munich, Rome, and Bologna – then copy the concepts before further ‘cascading cities’ review the findings in the context of their own streets. The initiatives span a huge range of innovations that look beyond transport as an individual sector.

The results?

Since the first pilot phase began in 2023, more than 11,000 people have hired out an Oslo City Bike through the Ruter app, tapping into a unique demographic of riders separate to those that hire through the long established Oslo City Bike app. Urban Sharing CEO Kristian Brink cites the potential of the service to grow in Oslo, with these recorded trips making up less than 1% of the 1.1 million journeys that Oslo City Bike recorded in 2024.  

“It’s no easy feat integrating a brand new mode of transportation into a public transport app,” Brink told Zag Daily. “They can book the train. They can book the bike. They can pay, receive their ticket, unlock the bike all on one app. This is pure, seamless, European integration.”

MOVE21 hope to use the success of Maas intergration in Oslo as a case study and blueprint for the rest of Europe. Brink concludes: “Slowly but steadily, we are rewriting the travel experience for commuters. And this is something that Europe has achieved on its own.”