Abstract Summary
Automated vehicles (AVs) are gradually entering our roadway system and self-driving buses are under development for trials and implementation in ordinary (mixed) traffic. Self-driving (mini)buses or Shared Automated Vehicles (SAVs) are a new transport mode, completely automated, with no steering wheel, usually small in size and capacity and with a low operating speed. Given the operational capabilities and the technology available, recent studies have suggested the implementation of SAVs as first- and last-mile alternative (Lane 2012), a sort of Demand-Responsive Transport (DRT) system operated with a fleet of automated shuttles. Although research is still at its early stage, practical demonstration have already started since the early 90’s, with one of the first automated buses being implemented in the parking area of Schiphol Airport (The Netherlands) which was in operation from 1997 to 2004 (2getthere 2019), (Parent 2019). In this study, we present an inventory of pilots, trials and demonstrations that involved automated (mini)buses in urban and suburban environments in several European countries (the complete report can be found in Hagenzieker et al., 2020). The inventory was developed by researchers from TU Delft as part of the Norwegian Autobus project† and with additional support from the STAD project‡ and the MRDH AVLM Programme§. Knowledge about (ongoing) pilots was acquired via online research, using general platforms such as Google, as well as scientific databases such as Google Scholar, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, Scopus and Researchgate. Some minimum requirements were used to narrow down the scope of the research. For this reason, only pilots that involved passenger transport taking place in the geographical area within Europe (including the United Kingdom) were considered for the inventory. A total number of 118 pilots was found, spread across 18 countries. Of the total 118 pilots, 32 were located in France, 12 in Germany and 9 in Norway. Pilots that did not take place, such as the Citymobil project in Rome (Delle Site, Filippi and Giustiniani 2011), were excluded from the inventory. Pilots that lacked information were also discarded. According to the information gathered, increasing interest towards self-driving buses is noticed starting from 2016, the year in which the number of pilots augmented considerably. Most pilots involve small buses, with low operating speed and running on an on-demand basis for short route length, suggesting that their main application may be as access and egress mode for facilities and/or public transport lines. Based on the main findings and observations gathered during our research, we would like to present and discuss the following topics: - An interactive map of Europe showing the locations of past, ongoing and future pilots contained in our inventory, identifying the number of pilots per country and the number of pilots per year; - An overview of the characteristics of vehicles used in the pilots, such as vehicle type, vehicle capacity and maximum, allowed and operational speed; - Insights from the case studies, with the aim to arrive at a more permanent and/or larger-scale implementation, infrastructural adaptations required, path length, and route; - Future challenges, e.g. how to implement AV shuttles as a regular part of MaaS and public transport networks in addition to last-mile solutions.
