Evaluation of Automated Transport Systems

An evaluation methodology is presented for four different Automated Transport Systems: Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), CyberCars (CC), High Tech Buses (HTB), Dual-Mode Vehicles (DMV). The evaluation is based on measurements of several sets of indicators: Acceptance, Quality of service, Transport patterns, Social impacts, Environment, Financial impacts, Economic impacts, Legal impacts, Technological success. The Automated Transport Systems (ATS) were tested and evaluated through demonstrators, showcases and case studies in different cities inside the European Commission (EC) CityMobil Project. The results of all the locally focused evaluations were inserted in the Passenger Application Matrix (PAM). Its rows and columns are the origin-destination (OD) considered in the cities where the ATS were tested and evaluated. The cells of the matrix contain the ATS studied in the CityMobil cities according to the origin-destination of the trips they cover. The PAM provides a brief account of all the evaluations and the first step for the selection of the most appropriate ATS in an OD pair. As a summary of the results of the evaluation, Personal Rapid Transit and Cybercars perform best as autonomous public transport in the city centres of small cities and as public transport feeders where the demand is sprawled, High Tech Buses represent the best solution in the medium/large cities on high demand corridors, and Dual-Mode Vehicles show the same Cybercars benefits as public transport feeder and allow an advanced car sharing, through innovative capabilities as automatic parking and platooning, especially in the medium/large cities.