Shared Mobility Revolution

As part of the European project SHOW (GA No 875530), 3 types of innovative automated vehicles, i.e., a U-Shift, a modular vehicle with an interchangeable capsule, a free-moving FZI-shuttle and a VIF-robotaxi, were deployed at 3 sites in Germany and Austria. Two of the vehicles provided both passenger and cargo transport services. The piloting period varied from 7 to 13 months. In total, all automated vehicles travelled 30,000 km and transported 14,000 people. No critical failures occurred. Passengers’ enthusiasm and high acceptance of AVs are noteworthy. Further technical challenges still need to be addressed, particularly regarding interaction with other road users, to achieve fully automated operation.

Public Transport Operators (PTOs) are crucial actors in developing and deploying shared automated mobility services with their role of ensuring service quality, passenger safety, and cost-effectiveness. This chapter underscores the pivotal role of remote supervision in facilitating the seamless operation of automated vehicle fleets from the point of view of PTOs. Drawing from real-life deployments of the EU-project SHOW (GA No 875530) and other initiatives, it highlights the necessity of learning from everyday situations to enhance operational efficiency and safety. Additionally, the vision for scalable supervision centres tailored to higher levels of automation is outlined, along with the imperative for standardization at the regional level to be able to scale the integration of automated vehicles into future public transport systems.

Seamless integration of new types of mobility such as those realized by Connected Automated Vehicles (CAVs) into the existing public transport service requires new service-oriented orchestration platforms. In this work, we present a framework for automated mobility of passengers and goods, realized by the service-oriented architecture of the EU-funded research project SHOW (GA No 857730). As part of the framework, intra-systems and cloud-to-everything interfaces are proposed, while high-level design specifications of architecture alternatives are critically reviewed. An actual example of how such an inclusive architecture is instantiated in Trikala SHOW pilot site for city-specific SHOW services deployment is presented. Finally, lessons learnt that are relevant to data access, interoperability and cybersecurity, based on the experience from all SHOW pilot sites, are outlined.

Within the EU Horizon 2020 project SHOW (GA No 875530) auxiliary measures, via evaluating and adapting physical road infrastructure (for instance lane markings, traffic signs, sight distances), as well as via digital support were explored for their potential contribution to enabling automated shared mobility services on the road environment. This line of research was then followed up on in the EU Horizon Europe Project AUGMENTED CCAM (GA 101,069,717), tackling more specifically with PDI support for automated mobility. This chapter presents the activities and findings of these two projects in relation to physical infrastructure adaptations for automated vehicles for two pilot sites in Austria.

Automated shuttles promise a solution to achieve sustainable mobility and meet the manpower issue in public transport, and are expected to extend public transport service coverage and improve riding comfort. The piloting activities at three German mega sites successfully demonstrated fixed and non-fixed mobility services and the technical possibilities to let shuttles move without a pre-defined virtual track and cope with a ride-booking application. Results show that the shuttles operated with promising performance. In total, in the EU project SHOW (GA No 875530), approximately 107,000 km and 40,000 passengers were respectively travelled and transported by twelve (12) automated shuttles. This chapter explicates the technical preparation, shares the collected experiences and proposes recommendations.

This study delves into autonomous bus depot management at EMT Madrid, the Madrid Public Transport Company, within the Horizon 2020 SHOW project (GA No 875530). Its aim is to boost operational efficiency and optimize resource usage, particularly by addressing unproductive hours for bus drivers. It examines the technical feasibility of automating manual depot tasks like vehicle charging, cleaning, and parking through advanced sensor technology and control systems. The pilot at Carabanchel bus depot involved automated vehicles (AVs) with perception sensors, control mechanisms, and centralized decision-making units, testing services like internal transport, autoparking, and teleoperation. Over eleven months, the AV fleet performed successfully without incidents. The findings indicate automation's promises in reducing operational costs and enhancing resource utilization, though, challenges like initial investments, technical constraints, and regulations persist. Recommendations are made to foster public–private collaboration for innovation in public transport and for market development.

In the city centre of Trikala, Greece, a real-life logistics service was operated with a fleet of 5 droids on a public route in the urban pedestrian area in the context of the SHOW project (GA No 875530). It took place from December 2022 to the end of February 2023. The droids are small automated vehicles missioned to carry out indoor and outdoor logistic services in pedestrian-centric environments. The logistics service that operated in Trikala was of two types: (a) a multi-stop parcel delivery service from the depot to the shops and (b) a parcel collection service from the shops to the depot. The current manuscript describes the solutions implemented and the challenges faced by the droids while performing last-mile deliveries. The manuscript concludes with suggestions from experience for new implementations of logistics services operated by automated vehicles. These include the advice to not underestimate the difficulty of integrating radically new vehicles into existing logistics services; the importance of having the trust and support of the population and the need for data network stability.

As vehicle automation advances, integrating automated vehicles into the existing transportation system is crucial, considering technical but also social factors. This chapter investigates two Austrian pilot sites, Graz and Pörtschach, by assessing user preferences through a novel “supertester” approach that included experiential elements as well as interviews, questionnaires and workshops. The supertester approach is a within-subjects empirical method in which the same group of individuals experiences various use cases. Employing this approach allowed a comparative analysis across diverse settings, use cases, vehicle types and user perspectives. The study underscores the critical role of fundamental safety functions and the relation between different vehicle types and corresponding expectations of passengers.

This chapter reports findings from a study using a consensus method with an expert and stakeholder panel (n = 78) to analyse the societal implications of Cooperative, Connected and Automated Vehicles (CCAV) in public transport. To address the uncertainty about the wider societal impacts of CCAV, this study combines the results of a modified Delphi study, insights from interviews conducted at pilot sites deploying CCAV in real-word environment, and expert interviews from various CCAM-focused European initiatives. The modified Delphi study assesses direct consequences of CCAV such as accessibility and equity of public transport, user-perceived safety, and the impact on job creation/destruction and re-skilling as well as indirect effects of CCAV such as variation in house prices. These impacts are assessed within four scenarios related to different services and business models being deployed and tested across Europe in the Horizon 2020 SHOW project (GA No 875530).

In this paper, we explore the importance of citizen and stakeholder engagement in the development of new mobility services, and how such aspects have been integrated and applied in the EU funded project SHOW (Horizon 2020 GA No. 875530). First, we provide a broad overview of how we engaged end-users and stakeholders in the project’s different pilot sites. Next, we zoom in on three engagement mechanisms—the Ideathon in Carinthia (Austria), the Hackathon in Thessaloniki (Greece) and the MAMCA (Multi-Actor Multi-Criteria Analysis) workshop in Tampere (Finland)—, presenting a variety of participative approaches for designing and evaluating new automated mobility services. The chapter offers a comparative analysis of these three approaches, highlighting for each case the opportunities and challenges. We show that stakeholder engagement activities efficiently generate ideas and validate solutions at a local level enriching the innovation process with novel perspectives, yet resource allocation and participant diversity pose challenges.

The perception of comfort and safety among passengers of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) is crucial and significantly influences their adoption in current Public Transport systems. It is essential to align the objective perception with an analysis of vehicle performance data to identify vulnerabilities and factors affecting passenger comfort and safety. This paper presents the first comprehensive correlation between objective and subjective data from autonomous fleets in three well-established pilot locations (Graz, Madrid, Linköping), each using different technologies and experiencing varying environmental conditions. Our analysis (i) revealed significant differences between the three pilot sites in terms of perceived safety and comfort (both perceived and actual) and (ii) confirmed a strong correlation between safety and comfort levels and the vehicles’ behaviour in terms of speed and acceleration, particularly noting the impact of hard braking events as those were defined by the SHOW consortium.

Automated vehicles are becoming more and more likely as they offer promising solutions to improve urban mobility: dispatching vehicles on roads to minimize congestion, reducing accidents, increasing savings of travel time, improving the transit level of service and reducing operating costs of public modes, thus limiting public subsidies. However, these potential positive externalities are not a sufficient condition for their deployment's success. A viable Business Model has to be developed. This paper aims to provide a better understanding of the emerging Business Models in shared Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM), through analysing the experiences and lessons learned from two pilot sites within the SHOW project: Les Mureaux (France) and Monheim am Rhein (Germany). In particular, a series of interviews have been conducted with mobility experts from both sites and conditions to achieve the viability whilst, later, the scalability of Business Models were discussed. Results revealed that to make automated transport services successful, several adjustments to traditional Business Models are necessary in terms of costs structures, required resources, and key partnerships. The viability and scalability are also sensitive to the costs of vehicles and supervision as well as to the maturity of automation technology.

Within the SHOW project (GA No 875530), real-life urban demonstrations across 22 cities were conducted, exploring and validating the integration of Cooperative Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM) in various public transport schemes. The project employs extensive traffic simulations using different tools and approaches. This chapter outlines the development of an integrated simulation suite that combines elements from the diverse simulations. The simulation suite is a web-based open access tool and offers guidelines, steps, and mathematical definitions for simulating CCAM. Designed for researchers, practitioners and even non-experts, while providing insights and results valuable to city planners. By emphasizing key findings from simulations, the application of the suite and its support for decision-making become more tangible.

Automated vehicles (AVs) are being tested and deployed globally, offering benefits such as reduced accidents, enhanced public transportation, and optimized operational costs. These advancements vary by region, with Europe focusing on shared AV fleets in public transport, Japan investing in infrastructure and safety technologies, and the U.S. being mostly driven by private sector innovations. This paper highlights the importance of international collaboration in AV development and deployment, emphasizing the need for thorough planning before any mutual project initiation. Effective collaboration so far is revealed to be more feasible and fruitful at the research level rather than high policy levels, especially when projects have similar scales, scopes, and timelines. Despite resource constraints, international collaboration is crucial for exchanging on practices and will become more and more important for harmonizing regulations and bringing innovation around AV technology. This chapter explores best practices and lessons learned for collaboration between the EU, the U.S., and Japan, using case studies built in SHOW (GA No 875530), to guide future international efforts in sustainable automated transport.