Daniele Stam

CityMobil2: Challenges and Opportunities of Fully Automated Mobility

The main benefits of road automation will be obtained when cars will drive themselves with or without passengers on-board and on any kind of roads, especially in urban areas. This will allow the creation of new transport services—forms of shared mobility, which will enable seamless mobility from door to door without the need of owning a vehicle. To enable this vision, vehicles will not just need to become “autonomous” when automated; they will need to become part of an Automated Road Transport System (ARTS). The CityMobil2 EC project mission is progressing toward this vision defining and demonstrating the legal and technical frameworks necessary to enable ARTS on the roads. After a thorough revision of the literature which allows us to state that automation will perform its best when it will be full-automation and vehicles will be allowed to circulate in urban environments, the paper identifies where these transport systems perform their best, with medium size vehicle as on-demand transport services feeding conventional mass transits in the suburbs of large cities, on radial corridors as complementary mass transits with large busses and platoons of them and as main public transport for small cities with personal vehicles; then defines the infrastructural requirements to insert safely automated vehicles and transport systems in urban areas. Finally it defines the vehicle technical requirements to do so.

Using Repeated-Measurement Stated Preference Data to Investigate Users’ Attitudes Towards Automated Buses Within Major Facilities

The paper reports on the results of an investigation about users’ attitudes towards automated and conventional minibuses for routes within major facilities. A common stated preference questionnaire has been used in four European cities. The econometric analysis is based on the estimation of three binomial logit models: one model considers all independent observations, a copula logit and an error component logit take into account the correlation among error terms of the observations by the same individual. The observed attributes are waiting time, riding time and fare. Of particular interest, is the estimation of the alternative specific constant (ASC) of the automated minibus, because this represents the mean of all the unobserved attributes of the automated alternative that affect the choice. With a common specification of the systematic utilities of the automated and conventional alternatives, the results show a positive value of the ASC, which is indicative, the observed attributes being the same, of a relatively higher preference for automation. The differences in policy implications among the three models estimated are negligible.

The Socio-Economic Impact of Urban Road Automation Scenarios: CityMobil2 Participatory Appraisal Exercise

This document aims at assessing and fine tuning alternative scenarios concerning road automated transport, based on the contribution of research, industry and public stakeholders convened at the CityMobil2 Workshops organised in La Rochelle on 30–31st March 2015. Two different paradigms—with and without a shift to shared mobility—were debated and a number of potential socio-economic impacts were identified. Road automation scenarios are devised for different urban typologies—large metropolitan areas, polycentric city networks, small-medium towns, rural/tourist areas. Impacts are assessed in a qualitative fashion—with the support of an online DELPHI survey followed by the workshop debates—in relation to a number of variables. These include: job disruption and creation; personal trips costs; public budget effects; insurance costs; accessibility to remote areas; road capacity and its use; journey comfort and convenience; energy and emissions; land saving for new public space uses; social impacts in terms of safety, personal security, health and active travel (trade-offs in automated rides vs. walking or cycling) and different perception/value of time spent travelling in automated vehicles.

Automated Road Transport Systems (ARTS)—The Safe Way to Integrate Automated Road Transport in Urban Areas

The CityMoibil2 project aims at developing and demonstrating Automated Road Transport Systems, ARTS. The philosophy of the project is that the vehicle cannot be automated autonomously; it requires infrastructures and external control systems to be in the picture too. The certification methodology developed by the project (derived from the rail technical standard EN 50126) is demonstrated to guarantee the safe insertion of automated road vehicles in the urban environment; however it requires some adaptation of the environment. It is based on a risk assessment procedure organized in 8 steps. Its application to one section of the Oristano demonstrator is used as example.

ParkShuttle II : Review of the Antibes Experiment

In many urban environments, the use of private automobile has led to severe problems with respect to congestion, energy (dependency on oil resources), pollution, noise, safety and general degradation of the quality of life. Therefore, city centers are facing severe problems, traditional commerce in them declines, moving to the periphery, and they become less attractive to visitors and businesses. Although public transport systems have seen many recent improvements mostly due to information technologies), in many cases the private car still offers a much better service at the individual level. This leads to a constant increase in its use, hence to non-sustainable development of urban transport. An innovative approach for mobility, emerging now as an alternative generic solution to the private passenger car, offers the same flexibility and much less nuisances: small automated vehicles that form part of the public transport system and complement mass transit and non-motorized transport, providing passenger service for any location at any time. These vehicles were developed during the 1990’s are now called cybercars and, under the control of a management centre, they form a transportation system called Cybernetic Transport System or CTS. The first CTS was put in operation at Schiphol airport (Amsterdam) in December 1997. In 2001, the European Commission funded two projects. One, called CyberCar, was aimed at the improvement of the technology necessary to implement and run such a CTS and was funded under the transport and tourism key action of DG INFSO research program. The second, CyberMove, was aimed to demonstrate the feasibility of CTS in present urban environments and was funded under the City of Tomorrow key action of DG TREN research program. Both programs ended in 2004.