Starting Your Own Pilot – Sohjoa Baltic. The Roadmap to Automated Electric Shuttles in Public Transport

Abstract

The upcoming years are crucial to the development of automated driving in Europe. The technology has great potential to serve public interest by improving the environmental sustainability of traffic and making transit safer and more enjoyable for everyone. Cities are finding solutions for more sustainable mobility in the public transportation sector. The automated (progressing to autonomous) vehicles aim to solve the cities’ needs to lower traffic emissions, provide better public transportation services, reduce human-related accidents and save resources. It is believed that once the vehicle technology is mature enough, the piloting proceeds into regular autonomous public transportation services.

Starting Your Own Pilot was co-created with the Sohjoa Baltic partner consortium as a practical guidance and recommendations for future actions in order to progress the Baltic Sea region authorities’ regulatory development work that enables the mobility and transport sector to create new service innovations and business opportunities. This publication describes the roadmap for short, medium and long terms and serves the urban planning authorities, urban transport authorities, companies providing public transport, traffic safety authorities and private sector innovation, service developers and academic and research institutions in their work as well as increasing awareness and improving acceptance of current and new users of public transportation.

This publication is part of a series consisting of five volumes created in the Sohjoa Baltic project.