MCube: STEAM - Holistic and user-centered utilization concepts of vehicles for passenger as well as freight transportation

Project Description

The STEAM project aims to analyze and design future vehicle utilization concepts in public transport for passenger and freight transport in a holistic and user-centered manner. These vehicle utilization concepts leverage the utilization potential of free capacities in times of low demand. Thereby, possibilities of flexibilization and deviation from rigid line operation up to on-demand operation and the integration of transport tasks in the logistics sector arise.

To this end, the existing regular service will be supplemented by minibuses, considering individual user and utilization requirements to be identified in the project, thus making it more flexible and efficient in its entirety. The resulting semi-flexible bus routes will serve the mobility demand in the peak and off-peak hours of the classic urban regular service in a demand-driven and efficient manner. To achieve the project goals, the project comprises: (i) the conception and simulative testing of electrified semi-flexible bus lines, (ii) the perspective integration of urban delivery traffic into semi-flexible lines, (iii) the development and prototypical implementation of a modular vehicle utilization concept suitable for this purpose, and (iv) the validation of the simulations and the testing of the vehicle utilization concepts in the context of a real laboratory.

Finally, concrete recommendations for action will be derived from the combination of the simulations and the real laboratory with the aim of designing a long-term sustainable development option for urban mobility in Munich and other metropolitan regions. The collaborative partners as well as other stakeholders will iteratively derive requirements for future vehicles as well as their interiors during the project duration and based on the validated and tested findings. In addition, the holistic, user-centric approach will enable innovative operating concepts and thus business models to be designed and analyzed.

Tasks of the Chair

• Selection of a suitable field application area in the Munich urban area
• Agent-based simulation of semi-flexible bus routes
• Linking of the decision support system, DSS (TUM-OSM) with the simulation environment FleetPy (TUM-VT)
• Evaluation of the simulation results