Chronic bus driver shortages across Europe are threatening to push mobility transition goals off the road. Recent leaps in automated mobility technology could lead the way to low-marginal cost, high-frequency demand-responsive solutions. But where does this automation fit in a city’s mobility strategy and practical planning? Over the past six years, consultants of Bax spin-off Pendel have worked with more than 15 public transport planning organisations in 7 European countries to design roadmaps that set the path to solving existential mobility issues with Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM) in their public transport systems.
Planning for public transport faces two era-defining challenges
The first challenge is that demands on public mobility provision have never been higher.
Ambitious decarbonisation targets require a greater share of trips to be taken by public transport, predicted to rise from 23% of passenger miles in 2022 to 35% in 2035.
Such a modal shift requires public transport to become as convenient and accessible as a private car. This means a reliable, demand-responsive and affordable public transport option running every hour of the day.
Only with a denser, more frequent public transport service can this be achieved, significantly more expensive to run under current operating conditions.
The second challenge is finding people to drive these buses. Changes in the labour market mean cities and rural areas across Europe face chronic bus driver shortages. Across Europe, there are more than 105,000 unfilled bus and coach driving positions. And with 330,000 bus drivers set to retire in the next 5-10 years, this shortage will only grow more severe.
For rural areas, the problem is even more acute. Private car use is much higher in these areas, where large areas and sparse populations make a scale-up conventional bus service expensive and inefficient to run. In fact, many rural towns are already struggling to afford bus services over wide areas even at current levels of demand, with 85% of bus operators running below break-even. The prospect of staffing and paying for a rural demand-responsive public transport network that rivals private car use represents a complete shift in mobility provision.
Whether in rural or urban areas, these two trends of modal shift and labour shortages – or otherwise said, more buses and fewer people to drive them – are set to intensify in the next decade.
So how can public mobility providers maintain a high quality of service in these conditions?
Automated public mobility emerges as a promising long-term solution
Automated mobility is emerging as a promising solution for large-scale application.
By removing the need for a driver, operating costs per trip could be reduced by 50%, transforming the business case for many rural services. The upcoming retirement wave among bus drivers could also be resolved.
There is still a long road to go before all public transport is autonomous. For the past decade, automation in Europe has focussed on small-scale pilots, valuable technical tests but with few signs of application at scale.
This is changing quickly.
Leading transport authorities and operators in Europe, such as De Lijn, Ruter, Hamburg, are currently planning for the deployment of automated buses at a wide scale within 15 years.
Hamburg has the ambition to deploy up to 10,000 shuttles by 2030 to enable 5-minute access to public mobility.
These are not small, controlled pilots in empty car parks, but city-wide solutions to the city’s most pressing mobility challenges.
Though the shift to automated public transport is arriving, it won’t happen all at once.
Not all roads and driving conditions are the same, meaning some use cases for automation will become feasible and cost-effective many years before others. The shift will be gradual and driven by which use cases become viable with lower operational costs first.
But what are these use cases?
Identifying which uses are two years away from viability and which are ten years away is key to developing a meaningful long-term plan for a robust public transport system.
This is especially the case for public transport authorities driven by concession contract cycles – knowing whether automation, demand-responsive options or any other innovation is likely to mature within the period of your upcoming concession contract is important information to know when communicating needs to public transport operators (PTOs).
The problem is that understanding the likely trajectory of an innovation and then building an effective plan around it is a difficult task. It involves closely examining leaders in the field, talking to technical experts, and having practical experience with the potential solutions.
Europe’s emerging approach for roadmapping automated mobility
For the past six years, Pendel’s founders have worked alongside Europe’s frontrunners – De Lijn, Ruter, Hamburg and others – as they move from technical pilots to long-term planning.
Over that time, we’ve developed a methodology for roadmapping automated public transport in collaboration with sector leaders. These include 15+ transport authorities and the flagship €56m EU project ULTIMO, featuring automated mobility leaders Ruter and Geneva.
The methodology supports the development of vision statements, investment plans and long-term roadmapping by answering 3 key questions.
Build your automation roadmap with Pendel
Pendel’s roadmapping service for automation and demand-responsive transport has helped 12 cities, regions and provinces in Europe build actionable roadmaps for CCAM. Roadmaps have helped cities understand their responsibilities, the investment case and the feasibility of automated public mobility in their areas of operation.
From in-person workshops to full feasibility studies, Pendel’s team of CCAM specialists can support your organisation from zero knowledge in automation to a comprehensive 15-year action plan.
