Helsinki’s MaaS App, Whim: Is It Really Mobility’s Great Hope?

A mid-sized city on the edge of Europe, Helsinki punches far above its weight in the world of urban mobility. With a regional population of 1.4 million, Helsinki has become a global testing ground for the ideas behind Mobility as a Service (MaaS: allowing commuters to plan and pay for trips across multiple transportation modes through a single access point). Many see it as the next big thing in mobility.

The city is home to MaaS Global, a startup whose Whim app debuted in Helsinki in October 2016. Sami Sahala, a mobility innovation project leader for the city of Helsinki, says he hosts visiting foreign delegations every week who are eager to hear the local perspective on MaaS. Global media from the Economist to The Guardian to The Financial Times have taken note. Amidst so much hype, it seems like a good time to take stock of what we do and don’t know thus far about Helsinki’s bold experiment, and how mobility stakeholders are responding to it.