From Demonstrator to Public Service: The AVENUE Experience

Abstract

The AVENUE projet’s vision for future public transport in urban and suburban areas is that autonomous vehicles will ensure safe, rapid, economic, sustainable, and personalised transport of passengers, while minimising vehicle changes and maximising vehicle utilisation. The goal of the project is to provide door to door, on-demand autonomous public transport services allowing commuters to benefit from the full capabilities of autonomous busses.

However, the road to a public transportation service is not so simple. Legal and regulatory requirements create barriers and obstacles, raising the costs and delaying the deployment of the services. In spite of the efforts from the European Commission for a harmonisation of the homologation process, urban public transportation is under national and local legislation, creating a highly fragmented European environment. In this chapter, we present some of our experience in setting up and deploying Autonomous busses in two cities, Geneva and Copenhagen.