Application of Driverless Electric Automated Shuttles for Public Transport in Villages: The Case of Appelscha

Abstract

This paper reports on the application of electric automated vehicles in the city of Appelscha, The Netherlands. Appelscha is challenged with a predicted decline of inhabitants and an already shrinking public transport network. To preserve the region’s accessibility, the municipality started a pilot with electric automated vehicles. These vehicles drove on a separate cycle lane for six weeks in 2016. This pilot has shown that a pilot is possible, with little infrastructural changes. Even though the maximum speed of 15 km/h might suggest that automated vehicles are suitable to share the road with cyclists, the cycle lane in Appelscha was not sufficient due to the width of the cycle lane. No accidents occurred during the pilot.

Overall architecture and system design of shuttle unmanned ground vehicle with road verification in intelligent transportation system zone

“…The previous experiments of shuttle UGVs have shown their huge application prospect and provided valuable experience for their deployment. In [32,33] EasyMile's EZ10 UGV conducted transportation mission on separate road in rural area and industrial park, Toyota's e-Palette UGV [34] drove in semi-closed Olympic Village, while Navya Tech's Arma DL4 UGV [35] regarded as a general representation of urban traffic, with various typical driving conditions, including straight road, curved road, intersection, slope road. The total length is approximately 1.7 km.…”

Enhanced Mobility With Connectivity and Automation: A Review of Shared Autonomous Vehicle Systems

“…A combination of SAVs with other transportation modes such as public transportation, however, might impose different conclusions [9], [10], [12], [18]. Although SAVs could be utilized in the way to facilitate the first and last mile transport [157] and promote the use of public transportation system (e.g., [154], [158]), SAVs may also divert passengers away from transit systems due to their capability of providing door-to-door services (e.g., [154], [159]).…”

Innovations in Transport

“…Also, since the starting locations of trucks influence platooning opportunities, there is an incentive to move facilities such as warehouses and depots closer to each other to achieve economy of agglomeration. Boersma et al (2018a) used existing cases of automated driving to derive success and failure factors for automated driving with a specific focus on the implementation of automated shuttles in the Netherlands like the Rivium Parkshuttle in Rotterdam, the WEpod in Ede/Wageningen (Boersma et al, 2018c), and a shuttle in Appelscha (Boersma et al, 2018b), as well as on an automated mini bus in the Oku-Eigenji area in Japan (Boersma et al, 2019). An important conclusion is that the focus of most pilots has been on technical feasibility with short route lengths and low speeds.…”