CITYMOBIL ADVANCED ROAD TRANSPORT FOR THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT

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1 CITYMOBIL ADVANCED ROAD TRANSPORT FOR THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT Jan P. van Dijke Senior Project Manager, TNO Science and Technology Advanced Chassis and Transport Systems P.O. Box 756, 5700 AT, Helmond, The Netherlands Tel: ; Fax: ; ABSTRACT CityMobil is an Integrated Project in the 6 th Framework Programme of the European Union. The goal is to make significant steps forward towards realisation of advanced integrated traffic solutions for the city of tomorrow. This is done by developing advanced concepts for innovative autonomous and automated road transport systems for passengers and goods. Among the most important results are three large-scale demonstrations in the cities of Rome (IT) and Castellón (ES) and at Heathrow Airport (UK). In these demonstrations the first steps of implementation of automated transport systems in a complex city environment will be realised. KEYWORDS Advanced urban transport, Integrated transport systems, Autonomous driving BACKGROUND The demand for mobility imposes an ever-increasing pressure on European cities. Without any doubt people have a strong preference for their private car to fulfil their mobility needs and as a result of this the number of private vehicles is rising, causing congestion and parking problems and in general diminishment of the quality of life in many cities. Meanwhile, cities are developing into ever more complex environments due to the availability of modern electronic driver support tools and information systems. Processing the provided information, making the right choices and acting accordingly is increasingly difficult for traffic participants. At the same time daily travel- and transport management and long term city-planning is becoming an increasingly complicated challenge for city officials and public transport operators. The city of tomorrow is therefore in need of integrated traffic solutions that provide the required mobility in an efficient, safe and economic matter. It is inevitable that automation, in all possible forms between providing information at one end of the spectre and fully autonomous driving at the other, will be a major factor in fulfilling this need. Only by introducing automation sustainable mobility in the urban environment can be achieved. The goal of CityMobil is to use 1

2 automation to make significant steps forward towards realisation of such integrated traffic solutions for the city of tomorrow. The CityMobil project continues the work that was done in the 5 th Framework Programs "The City of Tomorrow and Cultural Heritage" [1], and combines the outcome of the Netmobil [2] and LUTR [3] clusters. NETMOBIL is a cluster of research activities within the fields of automated vehicles, personal rapid transit, advanced driver assistance systems, automated vehicle guidance systems and their underlying technologies. The LUTR cluster links several different projects in the area of sustainable urban mobility, including land use, transportation, and the environment. The common objective of the LUTR projects is to develop strategic approaches and methodologies in urban planning that all contribute to the promotion of sustainable urban development. APPROACH The CityMobil project can be divided in two major activities. An R&D programme, aiming at identifying and removing barriers that are still in the way of large-scale implementation of automated transport systems. These barriers can be of various natures, for instance technological, administrative, legal or other. And there are a number of demonstration activities. Three major demonstrations, effectively the first stages of implementations of advanced transport systems in real city-environments will be set up. In addition to these three major demonstrations a number of smaller scale demonstrations or "showcases" will be organised to show the possibilities of advanced transport systems to stakeholders and the public. Finally a number of dedicated city studies into particular problems will be set up. The words "advanced transport systems" cover a lot of different options. The following examples show what types of systems of advanced transport systems the CityMobil project is focussing on: Cybercars: small autonomous vehicles for individual or collective transportation of people and goods, for specific areas such as city centres with little or no interaction with other (manual) vehicles. High-tech Buses: buses on rubber wheels, operating like a tram on lanes with a light infrastructure using electronic guidance either for automation or for driver assistance. Personal Rapid Transit (PRT): small fully automatic vehicles operating on guide ways to segregate them from pedestrians and other traffic. Advanced city cars and dual mode vehicles: new city vehicles integrating zero or ultra-low pollution mode and driver assistance such as ISA (Intelligent Speed Adaptation), parking assistance, collision avoidance, stop&go, etc. These vehicles should also incorporate access control coupled with advanced communications in order to integrate them easily into carsharing services. Dual-mode vehicles are developed from traditional cars but able to support both fully automatic and manual driving. The first applications of automatic driving will be for relocation of shared cars using platooning techniques but these vehicles could become full cybercars in specific areas or infrastructures. Dual-mode Vehicles represent the migration path from traditional cars to automatic driving. 2

3 Figure 1 - CyberCars Figure 2 - Advanced buses Figure 3 - Personal Rapid Transit Figure 4 - Advanced city cars and dual mode vehicles DEMONSTRATIONS At three locations a full-scale demonstration will be set up as a first step in a real implementation process. In these demonstrations the lessons learned over the years and the results of the R&D work will be combined to provide realistic integrated transport solutions. City demo 1: Heathrow Demonstration The objective of the Heathrow demonstration is the implementation and evaluation of a PRT system at Heathrow Airport. Of course Heathrow is not a city, but the traffic situation at a major airport like Heathrow has a strong resemblance with that of a busy city centre. An important focal point for the CityMobil project is to evaluate the effectiveness of the ULTra PRT system in this application. The system is based on small, light and energy efficient vehicles on a dedicated guideway network offering a personal, automated taxi service with point-to-point non-stop travel and no waiting. The system offers the convenience of the car, combined with the capacity of light rail but at a significantly lower capital cost. Principal applications are anticipated to be transport systems in cities. Early applications are in airports. In October 2005 BAA announced their commitment to the installation of the ULTra PRT system at Heathrow. This will take the form of a pilot project, 3.9 km in length, linking the passenger car park and terminal areas. 3

4 Success of the pilot will lead to the roll out of the system over the whole of Heathrow and all suitable BAA airports, and links to public services in the local area. City demo 2: Rome Demonstration The Rome demonstration is a short distance transport service using small automated vehicles, cybercars, to collect people from their parking slot or from the train station and to bring them to the entrance of the new Rome exhibition building near Fiumicino Airport. With respect to previous cybercars applications this new installation has a number of technical and integration features which will contribute to supply a service of extremely high quality that is therefore expected to have a good impact on the public. The technical complexity is high because, although segregated from external traffic, the transport system will be on a network and with a high vehicle density. There will be 12 vehicles in a slightly more than 2 km length of network, requiring good vehicle to vehicle communication to manage priorities at the intersections and the short headways needed to give high capacity. The system will provide a fully on-demand service, and vehicle reservation will be integrated with the car-park management; each time a car enters the car-park-gate it receives the number of the slot where to park and an automated vehicle is called to wait for the car occupants at the right stop. The waiting time will be greatly diminished without hampering the vehicle occupancy. City demo 3: Castellón Demonstration The objective of the Castellón Demonstration is the implementation of a hybrid transport system connecting the university and city centre of Castellón, a city with about 350,000 inhabitants in the Valencia Region and Benicassim, at the seaside. The proposed system is structured around two corridors, with more than 40 kilometres, in which a reserved platform for the public transport vehicles will be built. On this platform a hybrid system of guided buses will be used. This system has been selected to combine the cargo capacity, accessibility, speed and regularity of a railway-based solution with the flexibility, adaptability and smaller costs of a road based system. The vehicles will mainly travel on a dedicated infrastructure, although in some stretches of the itinerary they will share the infrastructure with other traffic. At intersections, the buses will be given priority over the private traffic. The vehicles to be used will be hybrid vehicles with electrical traction and a guidance system to assure the greatest accessibility at the stops and to allow the circulation and operation in sections where they will have to share the roadway with the private vehicles. The first line of the advanced transport system will provide service to the University Jaime I, the historical centre of the city, the important settlements in the seaside and the beach in Benicàssim, an important tourist resort located 20 kilometres north. The layout of this line will connect therefore the main centres of mobility. In a second phase, a second line not foreseen within the current scope of CityMobil - will also connect with the south of the metropolitan area Reference Group, city studies and showcases 4

5 The number of cities and sites that showed interest in CityMobil and that wanted to be a candidate for one of the demonstrations was much larger than the 3 that could be accommodated in the project. After selecting the three demonstration-sites: Heathrow, Castellón and Rome, it was decided to organise the other cities in a Reference Group. A group of cities will be formed to collect information about user needs and user acceptation and to provide feedback on the projects results. Specific issues brought up by the demonstration cities or the Reference Group cities that require further research will be addressed in the R&D programme. In the first phase of the project the cities and the R&D partners will identify and decide on these issues in a series of meetings. In the second phase of the CityMobil project some of these issues will be selected for in-depth studies. In one or two of the Reference Group cities a limited additional demonstration may be set-up to prove the applicability of the concepts developed in the research sub-projects. The main goal of the showcases is to demonstrate to city authorities the new mobility concepts offered by cybercars, advanced city vehicles and dual mode vehicles. For this purpose a small fleet of 3 cybercars and 2 advanced city vehicles will be developed and maintained which can be brought to various cities such as those of the Reference Group cities or to specific ITS or Urban Transport events. These showcases are not intended to be first stages of full-scale implementations, like the city demonstrations but will be short term events, with a duration of one to two weeks. R&D PROGRAMME The R&D programme is divided in 5 sub-projects. The issues addressed in these sub-projects concern two types of issues: 1. Well-defined general issues. A number of research questions are based on general open issues or barriers that are known to stand in the way of large scale implementation of advanced transport in cities. Most of these issues were identified in earlier (European) research projects (notably LUTR and NETMOBIL clusters). These barriers can be of a technological nature, like obstacle detection and avoidance, but there are also issues of traffic management and a number of very important legal and institutional issues to be addressed. Furthermore there are issues that have not been addressed in these earlier projects and that are mostly related to the seamless integration of new innovative systems in existing environments. 2. Specific requirements resulting from actual city situations. The second group of requirements is directly derived from the actual questions that arise when advanced systems are implemented in real city environments. The issues will mainly be generated by the city demonstrations and the Reference Group cities. Sub-project: Future scenarios 5

6 This sub-project will identify likely scenario's for sustainable urban transport of people and goods in 2020, 2030 and 2050, taking into account issues like mobility growth; developments in delivery and supply; spatial requirements; environmental requirements; economics; city design and safety and security. In this subproject tools will be developed with which cities and operators can analyse the transport requirements in a given urban environment and calculate the effects of various system options. The tools will help in obtaining answers to the question: Will an automated system be a viable option for a certain city. In addition to these tools, the other products will be: A state of the art review of the understanding of the contribution of the different forms of advanced road transport, the contexts within which they might operate, and the tools available for predicting and assessing their impact. A problem assessment with regard to urban transport of people and goods and identification of possible intervention areas for automated road transport systems. A set of urban transport innovation scenarios for future urban transport including the implementation trajectories/road maps towards these scenarios. The result of this sub-project should also give a clear overview of all legal and administrative barriers that are in the way of the introduction of automated systems as well as strategies to take away those barriers or work around them. Sub-project: Vehicles & technological issues This sub-project addresses the technological and human factor issues that are in the way of large scale introduction of automated systems. In principle the sub-project only addresses those issues that are typical for automated transport. General issues like for instance energy supply, that are also subject of research in other projects are left out of this sub-project, but may be addressed as a part of one of the demonstrations. In general, there will be a strong link with the demonstrations sub-project. Issues like obstacle detection; collision mitigation; navigation and communication; infrastructure; parking solutions; testing methods and human factors will be addressed. The vehicles and Technological issues sub-project will contribute to the general CityMobil goals with the following main results: Study and development of a heterogeneous and redundant control architecture (hardware and software) being able to reach a high level of safety, and specifically designed for cybercars. Prototype of such innovative control architecture, and evaluation of its performances in terms of reliability on a mock-up vehicle. Mathematical models and algorithms experimentally validated for the control of road-trains made of cybercars. Sub-project: Operational issues The aim of the Operational Issues sub-project is to identify the elements and the required organisational arrangements of Advanced Urban Transport Systems in order to achieve goals like improved transport efficiency, less congestion and an improved environment. Hence, methods and tools from infrastructure planning to real time fleet management are involved in the 6

7 operational management of the new transport systems proposed by CityMobil. The sub-project will deal with system-management and integration of an innovative automated system in an existing environment. The topics are operational management; information flow; fleet management; traffic management; merging automated and non automated traffic flows and integrating automated transport in an existing structure. The end users of the Operational Issues sub-project will be the public transport operators, cities and regional administrations in charge of the management of public transport networks and traffic. Decision makers will have the opportunity to study and make use of the key results in this sub-project in order to enhance traffic and transport plans in a city or urban areas. Additionally, the citizens will benefit from the customisation of services tackled in the sub-project. Sub-project: Evaluation The Evaluation sub-project aims at evaluating whether and under what conditions the project has been successful in meeting its objectives and to draw the lines of further development of road transport automation. Will the technology that becomes available to make road transport advanced be sustainable? This is the one of the main questions the CityMobil project is aiming to answer and the main outcome of the Evaluation sub-project. A bottom-up approach is being followed: the contribution to sustainability and the road-map for the future developments of these technologies will be derived from the results of the demonstrations and study evaluations. Under the umbrella of this broad objective and bottom-up approach four practical objectives of the SP have been defined. To quantify and qualify the benefits of advanced road transport systems. To monitor the progress of the demonstrations and provide feedback. To generalise the evaluation results of trials and studies and transfer them to other cases. To identify how advanced road transport systems can contribute to sustainability. ORGANISATION CityMobil is a five year project. The work started on May 1, 2006 and it will end in April The 28 CityMobil partners, representing 13 different European countries form a varied group of experts with representatives from Industry, Engineering Consultancies, Research Institutes and Universities. All partners have expertise in the field of innovative transport systems and the consortium covers all the subjects that need to be addressed as a result of the broad range of activities in CityMobil. The relationship between the sub-projects is given in figure 5 below. The figure shows the basic relationships between the sub-projects and the demonstrations. The future scenarios study SP 2 gives the direction in which urban transport is developing which will be input for SP 3 and 4 on technological issues and operational issues respectively. SP 5: Evaluations will provide standards and indicators to SP 2. The results of SP 2 will also be valuable for the City studies and the demonstrations. The evaluative framework that is being developed in SP 5: Evaluations will supply performance indicators to allow the work in SP 2, 3, and 4 to be assessed for financial, operational and sustainability outcomes. The results of SP 2, 3 and 4 will be evaluated in SP 5. The demonstrations and city studies will generate a number of requirements and research issues 7

8 to be addressed in SP 2, 3 and 4 and these sub-projects will provide answers, solutions and options to the demonstrations and city studies. SP 0: Project Management SP 2: Future scenarios SP 5 Evaluations SP 3 Technological issues SP 4 Operational issues SP 1: Demonstrations and City studies Figure 5 - Relationships between the CityMobil sub-projects ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The project described here is co-funded by the European Union as an Integrated Project in the 6th Framework Program for Research and Technical Development. REFERENCES [1] City of Tomorrow and Cultural Heritage; Key action 4: City of tomorrow and cultural heritage of the EU s Fifth Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. [2] Netmobil: New Transport System Concepts for Enhanced and Sustainable Personal Urban Mobility. European 5th Framework Program [3] LUTR: Land Use and Transportation Research: Policies for the City of Tomorrow. European 5th Framework Program