Sustainability Assessment of the Integration of Automated Minibuses in Urban Mobility Systems: Learnings from the AVENUE Project

The AVENUE sustainability assessment integrates the environmental, economic and social assessment of the pilot trials of AVENUE. A step further, it adopts an interdisciplinary approach to conduct the analysis and to better understand the complexity of deploying a new form of mobility in urban areas and as part of the transportation system. The goal is to implement new mobility solutions that benefit the city and complement public transport. The findings from the social, environmental and economic impact assessments are embedded in a multidimensional set of indicators for the sustainability assessment of the automated minibuses. As a result, mobility radars are built to illustrate the assessment of the AVENUE demonstrator sites. The results reveal the state of the art of the current deployment of the automated minibuses in the AVENUE test sites. In addition, this study highlights other crucial elements for a sustainable deployment that rely on the mode of deployment of the automated minibuses, the level of integration to urban public transport or within MaaS perspective and the alignment with the city’s goals, planning and strategies for sustainable mobility. Ultimately, the automated minibuses are an innovative piece within the mobility ecosystem that could support intermodality, MaaS, mobility hubs and the use of soft modes of transport.