In yesterday's Evening Standard's editorial they welcomed news that Citymapper will be offering a simple way to use all sorts of forms of transport in London including ride-sharing taxis in return for a single, weekly flat fee — which could add up to less than Transport for London charges for the current travelcard.  The Editorial said:  "It sounds like smart thinking." 

Citymapper subscription service for London transport is called Citymapper Pass.  This new contactless payment card will combine buses, trains, trams, Santander bikes and Citymapper’s Ride service as part of a weekly subscription.  Citymapper used the term:  'mobility as a subscription' and shows the ambition of the company to offer genuine mobility as a service. 

The CEO and founder Azmat Yusuf said:  "The idea is to make public transport effortless. The way our app makes it easy to plan, we want to make it easy to pay,” . “We’re trying to create a vision of this future where mobility is something where, as a user, you care about getting from point A to point B. We want to make it so it’s a bit like a utility, you can access whatever comes along.” 

The long term ambition is that the Pass should work globally, so that users do not ever have to worry about how to use a foreign public transport system, they can just check a route and go.

From the launch, there will be two subscriptions. The first, at about £30 (prices may still be subject to final tweaking), will give Citymapper Pass subscribers full access to zones one and two of Transport for London’s network for a week. For £40, they’ll get the same, plus unlimited rides on TfL’s Santander docked bike shares as well as two journeys on Citymapper’s Ride, its cab-sharing system similar to Uber Pool.

As Wired wrote:  It’s the first step towards mobility as a service – but it’s a long road until all of London is covered.

On a similar theme of the future of mobility on Tuesday, Intelligent Transport covered the story that Trafi and Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG) have announced their plan to launch a new application called Jelbi, which will include all types of available transport in Berlin.  The app will include the entire public transportation system: scooters, bikes, ride-hailing and car-sharing, as well as traditional taxis. This means app-jumping will no longer be necessary as all mobility modes will be integrated and accessible.  Planning, booking and consuming is all part of the Jelbi app.