Tokenizing Transportation: Blockchain Solutions for MaaS Ticketing

In a world of fast-growing cities and the need for easier, eco-friendly travel, Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is a promising solution. MaaS combines different types of transportation like buses, taxis, and bikes into one easy platform for planning and payment. At the current state, MaaS implementations face several problems like fragmented territorial systems and privacy concerns between Mobility Service Providers. In this thesis, I propose the design and implementation of a possible MaaS infrastructure that tries to solve those problems with the use of blockchain and smart contracts. I created a standard for representing tickets and I was able to code smart contracts to handle this standard and to allow buying and validating tickets. On top of that, I also built the back end in NodeJs and the front end of a mobile application in React Native. The app is able to autonomously fetch data from the Mobility Service Providers and to buy tickets through the blockchain by only knowing the address of the main smart contract. All payments are handled through the blockchain as well. While in this thesis I focused on coding the contracts for the Ethereum blockchain, the work could be extended by building a completely private and personalised blockchain where those contracts can run more efficiently from the point of view of costs and privacy.