Automated transport in urban areas: opportunities in the Netherlands

Abstract

utomated transport could be one of the options to contribute to the development of sustainable mobility in urban areas. In order to realize sustainable mobility in urban areas transportation planners should invest in collective and space efficient transport. With this purpose in mind, this paper is about nonmechanical guided automated transport on the road with the ambition to participate in conventional traffic in the long term, with the so-called cybernetic transport systems (CTS). As well as a contribution to sustainable mobility, these systems should also contribute to the current transport system and have to answer transportation demands. Since municipalities feel the direct consequences of conventional transport, they also feel the negative impacts of this kind of transport. The effects of these impacts make a municipality one of the most important stakeholders for the problems related to traffic in urban areas. This paper elaborates on the possibilities of CTS to contribute to the current transport system and on the possibilities of municipalities to develop innovative and sustainable transport systems like CTS.