AVENUE was one of the biggest European projects with automated vehicles on the road. Despite facing significant challenges, such as the COVID-19 restrictions and the bankruptcy of a key partner, AVENUE made remarkable achievements, including the successful deployment of AVs with “nearly SAE level 4” automation in regular commercial public transportation. These AVs provide on-demand and door-to-door services across four European demonstrator and two replicator cities. Throughout the project, these services amassed 80,000 kilometres travelled and 60,000 passengers and utilised 10 automated minibuses in 4 European demonstrator cities (Geneva (Meyrin, Belle-Idée; Switzerland), Lyon (ParcOL; France), Copenhagen (Nordhavn, Slagelse; Denmark) and Luxembourg (Pfaffenthal, Contern; Luxembourg)) and 2 replicator cities (Uvrier in Switzerland and Esch-sur-Alzette in Luxembourg). Additionally, running projects were incorporated into AVENUE, contributing an additional 82,000 km travelled, 100,000 passengers served and the use of 6 AMs. The term “nearly level 4” AVs indicates that, for technical and legal reasons, a safety operator was required to be present in the AV for supervision and incident handling. Vehicle services that substantially enhance the passenger experience as well as the overall quality and value of the service were introduced, also targeting elderly people, people with disabilities and potentially vulnerable users. Road behaviour, security of the AVs and passengers’ safety were crucial points of the AVENUE project.

In the first part of the book, the implementation on the sites and advancements of the vehicle have been documented. Safety and security issues are analysed but also how they can be addressed with, for example, in-vehicles services. Specific requirements for persons with reduced mobility (PRM) are further examined. A comprehensive analysis of stakeholders is finally provided to understand how a collaboration of the AV ecosystem can best provide value and benefits for all the stakeholders and the society.

In Part II, a holistic approach is used to analyse the technical, social, economic, environmental and governance impact assessment of the implementation of AV vehicles. The approach of this in-depth research demonstrates that all the dimensions are interrelated, for example, to show how AVs can enable positive externalities or reduce negative externalities. Technical issues have further business impacts, and governance influences business viability and success for all stakeholders, etc. A comprehensive representative survey depicts a noteworthy goodwill for the innovative services provided with automated minibuses. The aim of the interdisciplinary approach was to enable and objectivise a balance between individual private and general interests as well as between the ecosystem stakeholders in general. The purpose is to maximise the benefits for the society to the best for all the stakeholders (common interest).

As a result, a proposal on how to integrate automated vehicles into a city has been developed in Chap. 18:

  • Automated minibus integrated in a MaaS could be a real game changer and enable a sustainable mobility and fair share of the created values between the stakeholders. In this described future, AVs are complementing and fostering other means of transport, in particular mass transport. Rural, remote or suburban areas, for example, could have access to existing mass transport infrastructure and MaaS services and consequently be better deserved. Tangential connection between two suburban areas could be possible. The system can save energy and materials but also space. It provides further temporal flexibility and spatial flexibility nearly similar to private cars and does not compete with public transport. A sustainable and citizen centric mobility is thus possible without a coercive (technology push) transport policy, just in increasing the choice and improving the provided mobility services (demand and attractivity pull). Even privately owned or privately shared cars are part of the model (see Figure 18.2) and justified, for example, in areas with poor infrastructure or where time is a critical issue.

  • Integrating AV in an intelligent transport system could further make it possible to use mobility data and artificial intelligence to improve the transport system with fast and slow closed loops. Thus, the recommended approach goes beyond the current product AV innovation and suggests using the automated minibus as a trigger for disruptive innovation of the transport system as a whole. The transport system would become thus ambidextrous in being able to combine antinomic economic goals: efficiency and flexibility. The transport system would also turn more resilient, as in case of failure (incident or accident), an automated minibus could bridge mobility gaps.

A transition planning towards this desirable future has finally been developed in Chap. 19. This is necessary to make live the strategy and deploy it successfully. Recommendations have been formulated within this framework. This transition is necessary as the European AV in MaaS mobility market is currently fragmented and stakeholders in particular OEMs of automated minibuses and the related digital service provider are struggling with the viability of their AV business models (see recommendation R_2024-26.5 in Chap. 19). To create a federated (democratised) and sustainable transport systems which serves the general interest, TPOs and TPAs should shape the market in defining the technical specifications of the vehicles to be integrated in a MaaS and ITS. This makes sense as TPOs and TPAs are already driven by society (“purpose economy”) and EU/national regulations to serve the general interest. A disclosure of their procurement goals and strategies would further be necessary to give a long-term perspective to the AV ecosystem and ease their own financing of innovative AV in MaaS/ITS technologies. The emergence of strong OEMs/AV technology provider and their related AV-ecosystems would thus be enabled and supported. This could be a promising alternative to possible strategies in other parts of the world where states or private companies (GAFAM or BATX) or both share the risks with the hidden ulterior motive to capture value for private interest (closed ecosystems focusing on “the winner takes it all”) or even for questionable states goals, for example, regarding data privacy.

The AVENUE vision will be implemented and tested in parts within the Horizon Europe ULTIMO project: 15 multivendor vehicles will be implemented each in Oslo (Norway), Herford (Germany) and Geneva (Switzerland) until 2026. The integration of logistics will be tested as well in Geneva. The ULTIMO project will also have to make an update on the proposed vision of Chap. 18. Indeed, in the long run, with the loosing of the boundaries between traditional motorised private and public transport dominance like mentioned in the foreword of FEDRO, the suggested proposal will have to be evaluated again.