The baroque old town of Passau is popular, but it is not known for good air. The city bus drives 48 times a day through the narrow streets near the Danube, past historic houses and street cafes. Residents have long been calling for an alternative to the noisy and smelly diesel buses. Instead of small, smart solutions, however, the winding city of three rivers has in recent years purchased larger articulated buses that can carry more passengers per driver. This lowers costs, but does not help the residents very much.
The transport ministers of all federal states want to double the number of passengers using local public transport by 2030. How this goal is to be achieved, however, nobody really knows. Many municipalities already have enough problems with the electrification of their bus fleets. Planning new underground and tram routes takes far too long and, in the case of the underground, is extremely expensive. “Newly established, high-quality bus services with a short to medium-term implementation horizon (two to eight years) will often be the preferred alternative,” wrote Munich’s Mayor Dieter Reiter in August. He did not reveal where the drivers for the additional buses come from.
Due to the growth targets of the industry and age-related departures, 50,000 skilled workers will have to be recruited by 2025. Many positions can no longer be filled, complains the VDV transport association. With autonomous driving on the horizon, it is not getting any easier to recruit young people. The development of robot taxis is progressing more slowly than often announced. Tesla keeps mentioning new introduction dates for “Full Self Driving”, but actually fewer and fewer customers believe in it: In the past two years, orders have fallen from 46 to eleven percent worldwide. At the moment, the supposed autopilot is just a pimped-up assistance system that Tesla can pay for it princely with 7500 euros.
A Tesla with the so-called lidar crown: At the beginning of the year, a Tesla Model Y equipped with a company logo was discovered in the US state of Florida.
(Photo: gbrulte / Twitter)
Autonomous driving has passed the peak of the hype cycle, even if sensors and the processing power of computer chips continue to make rapid advances. At the beginning of the year, Tesla tested the lidar sensors reviled by Elon Musk in comparison to their own, exclusively camera-based solution – and caused a sensation in Internet forums. But all solutions are still flawed, which is why the technology needs sensible guard rails for the first use. These include, for example, magnets in the floor that help the autonomous shuttle guide its lane and a top speed of initially 40 km / h – which is above the usual average speed in many metropolitan areas.
Passau is one of the pioneering cities that will soon be offering its citizens autonomous shuttle services. In July the city council unanimously approved 100,000 euros for detailed route planning on the route of the historic “granite railway”. Disused rail routes are particularly well suited to safely using driverless buses in the city as soon as possible: In contrast to robo-taxis, which have to move through the congested and sometimes chaotic road traffic as regular participants, the driverless buses have comparatively easy things on the separated lane Game: The transitions for other road users are precisely regulated, a radio link with the traffic lights concerned can be installed quickly. “We need 18 months for the development,” says Jochen Benz, the managing director of the automotive supplier ZF responsible for this project, with a surprisingly optimistic outlook.
Bus terminal without a bus driver: This is how the system provider ZF envisions the future of local transport – with smaller buses that run at a higher frequency.
(Photo: ZF Group)
It could be a paradigm shift – also for the automotive supplier ZF, which is now also a provider of complete shuttle systems: According to ZF, the new public transport offer, which does not require drivers, can be implemented at significantly lower costs than reactivating electric rail vehicles, for example. In addition, relatively small transport containers with high frequency and punctuality are more attractive to users than large articulated buses, which tend to travel rarely. This increases acceptance among the population and the number of cars in city centers is potentially decreasing.
“Many drivers can only be persuaded to switch if they don’t need much longer with public transport than with their own car,” emphasizes the Mobility Institute Berlin (mib). With their travel time index, the researchers show that even in German congestion capitals such as Munich, Berlin and Hamburg, drivers are on average twice as fast as using public transport. More direct connections could make the time-consuming change unnecessary. But not only the rolling stock is missing, but also the additional professional drivers and ultimately the money: “The previous financial framework does not allow public transport to make its possible contribution to climate protection by doubling the demand,” complains Munich’s Mayor Dieter Reiter, spokesman for the MVV association districts.
Driverless electric shuttle buses for up to 22 passengers could be on the Passau Granitbahn route as early as 2024. In 2026 a second automated route is to lead from the main train station to the university clinic through the city center. Project partner DB Regio Bus makes it clear that Passau is not an individual solution: “We are already integrating autonomous vehicles into local transport and are actively promoting the mobility transition and climate protection,” said Frank Klingenhöfer. By 2030, the DB Regio Bus Board of Management wants to deploy 10,000 autonomous shuttle vehicles in Germany, and by 2035 sees a nationwide need for over 30,000 driverless buses.