Bax & Company is currently working with 10 cities and public authorities in the UK, Sweden, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium and France to develop pilots for new mobility concepts. Specifically this includes:
Development of autonomous vehicle pilots in urban and rural environments (from the Scottish Highlands to the City of Hanover)
Demonstrators for better interoperability between private shared-mobility providers and public authorities (Antwerp, Rotterdam)
Development of a Mobility-as-a-Service platform in cities (Antwerp, Mechelen)
Implementation of mobility hubs (Valenciennes, Norfolk County Council)
Within Autonomous Mobility Europe, currently four cities and public authorities - with very distinct challenges & scopes - jointly develop projects to pilot autonomous vehicles within their local environment. The settings vary from rural and provincial areas in the Scottish Highlands and Sweden up to urban and suburban districts in the Netherlands and Germany.
Bax & Company supports this network operationally with structuring the pilot development process towards a unified approach.
Challenge: Given the foreseen expansion, challenges arise for spatial planners of Almere how to design 4 new districts consisting of 60.000 dwellings by 2030 and an estimated investment of €2-4B that can accommodate this expansion and have the right design for integration of future mobility such as AV. With new (AV) technology on the horizon the main challenge for Almere is: how can new technology contribute to public transport infrastructure of the new-to-be developed infrastructure of the new districts.
Scope: Almere aims to develop an autonomous, electric bus service, as part of the current public transport service and improves the accesibility either within or between the new districts. Large autonomous busses are not yet ready for piloting. Therefore, Almere will test with autonomous, electric shuttles.
Impact: The knowledge and experience that Almere will get through this pilot will contribute to their public transport strategy and urban planning of the new-to-be developed districts.
Challenge: The city of Garbsen plans to develop a new Leibniz University Campus which will open later this year (2019). Foreseen is that 5300 students and employees will commute in the morning peak between Hannover and the new campus. Current bus infrastructure is not sufficient to deal with this demand. Furthermore, demand times might fluctuate outside the traditional rush hours as well. E.g. in exam periods more commuting is expected in evenings and weekends.
Scope: To address the challenge above, Hannover region aims to develop an autonomous, on-demand, shared and electric shuttle that connects the new campus with local tram/train stations that provide the mass transit of commuters from the Hannover region. Collaboation is foreseen between Region Hannover, City of Garbsen, RegioBus.
Impact: Increased accessibility of the new campus. Furthermore, will this pilot assess the local impact on infrastructure and mobility behaviour which provides valuable input for the development of Green transport- and spatial planning strategies.
Challenge: Inverness Airport reaced almost 90000 passengers in 2017. The Airport rail station is scheduled to open in 2020. However, no connection is foreseen with smaller and new developemnts in the rural areas. Better transport services are needed for the community to reduce connection costs and traffic.
Scope: Hitrans aims to connect Inverness Airport with the rail station and Tornagrain new development (200 homes, 10000 people) with a Driverless Shuttle Bus enabling quicker and efficient transportation of passengers from the terminal to the station and to the closer city.
Impact: the electric self-driving shuttle bus will improve the public transport service efficiency of the airport, reducing time of travel for passengers, costs, enabling transportation of weaker users, lowering the use of private cars and therefore traffic and emissions.
Challenge: Varberg municipality has a development plan for the expansion of the housing over the next 15years required from the population growth. This generates the need of infrastructure and services able to efficiently connect the new development with the city’s centre and industrial areas.
Scope: to address above challenges, the municipality of Varberg has the ambition to integrate Autonomous vehicles in the current mobility system. SUV pilot project will be used to assess the potential impacts on the current development planned by connecting e.g. new districts with the city centre and with the harbour (core of the city economic activities).
Impact: AV integration would support the municipality’s traffic and green strategy to achieve an efficient, safe and sustainable traffic by providing improved services to the community and and reducing road traffic and car pollution.