System Innovation in Passenger Transportation with Automated Minibuses in ITS: The Citizen-Centric Approach of AVENUE

The first chapter explores three pathways for incorporating automated vehicles (AVs) into future mobility ecosystems: privately owned AVs, robotaxis and automated minibuses in a Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) and (later) in an Intelligent Transport System (ITS). The chapter emphasises that automated minibuses, when seamlessly integrated into a MaaS, could emerge as pivotal "game changer", complementing and fostering other means of transport, in particular mass transport. Integrating in a next step AVs within an ITS could further make it possible to use mobility data and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the transport system to a higher level of mobility evolution. By employing both fast and slow closed AI loops, it envisions a transport ecosystem that not only operates more efficiently and flexibly but is also consequently citizen-centric and addresses sustainability challenges. The successful implementation of this concept hinges on open data, Application Protocol Interface (APIs) and the potential of AI to create a self-learning transport system to serve the general interest. A sustainable and citizen-centric mobility is thus possible without a coercive (technology push) transport policy. Instead, it champions an approach that increases the transport options and enhances the provided mobility services (demand & attractiveness pull). Depending on the local governance, even privately owned or privately shared cars can be part of the model, justified, e.g. in areas where mobility infrastructure deficits loom large or when travel time is too high. This chapter therefore forms the basis for a vision to redesign our mobility ecosystem and marks the beginning of a disrupting system innovation, where integrated sustainability and citizen centricity reshape the nature of mobility.