One in two Barcelona residents now uses SMOU

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28/02/2023
Imatge

Barcelona's personal mobility services app celebrates its fourth anniversary with 800,000 users 

Incorporating more than 20 services, last year SMOU recorded 16.4 million operations, especially Bicing and parking meter payments via the app 

In order to continue contributing to planned, sustainable mobility, SMOU is working to expand its range of services and boost its usability to become a true Mobility as a Service (MaaS) tool

Barcelona’s personal mobility services app SMOU is celebrating its fourth anniversary this February with record numbers. One out of every two inhabitants of the city uses SMOU to get around Barcelona. Now 800,000 people are using this app, which is promoted and managed by Barcelona de Serveis Municipals (BSM). In the four years it has been operating, there has been a sixteenfold increase in the number of SMOU users.

SMOU currently offers around 20 mobility services. It includes solutions like Bicing, Endolla Barcelona network charging points, payment per minute of regulated parking on the street and in the BSM car park network and management of AREA parking spaces for residents. It also allows users to make queries about services like shared bicycles, cars and motorbikes, along with real-time information on public transport.  

Last year, SMOU recorded a total of 16.4 million operations. Now there are around 45,000 operations per day, five times more than the first year it was operating. The services used the most were Bicing and payment per minute of regulated parking, with 11.5 and 4.7 million operations per year, respectively. 

Throughout 2022, with the goal of contributing to planned urban mobility that is as sustainable as possible, the app added new and unique functionalities. One important one is the integration of the Residents Barcelona service, which enables the management of AREA parking places for residents; the Bicing predictive service, which reports on the likelihood of finding a bicycle or a free place in the stations 15 or 30 minutes in advance; real-time information on stops, stations and timetables in the Bus, Metro, Tram, Rodalies (local train) network and Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya; as well as the ‘How to get there’ function, which allows users to find and plan the best route to get from one part of Barcelona and its metropolitan area to another, using either public or private transport, and to locate the parking options available at the destination.

Another new feature this past year was real-time information queries enabling users to check the availability of parking spaces at more than 200 car parks run by different operators in Barcelona. 

In the opinion of the Councillor for Mobility and chair of BSM, Laia Bonet, “the rapid development of SMOU is a clear sign of the city's bid to apply technology to promote increasingly sustainable mobility”. SMOU is now part of the day-to-day lives of thousands of Barcelona residents, for whom it provides innovative solutions, such as predictive systems and real-time information queries so they can plan their routes. It also features a host of services, which facilitates intermodality between a wide variety of transport modes. 

Planning, booking and paying via SMOU 

The figures on the use and new functionalities added in recent months confirm the success of SMOU as the application for people who move around Barcelona. Fostering planned urban mobility that is as sustainable as possible is still its main goal, and this is why SMOU is working to expand its services and enhance its usability.   

Plus, SMOU is planning to ensure that as many of its services as possible can be checked, booked and also paid for on the app itself. This will allow SMOU to be a true Mobility as a Service (MaaS) tool, offering users in Barcelona route, booking and payment options that are personalised according to their needs. 

 

This is a project financed with funds from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, financed by European Union – NextGenerationEU.

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