Transumo: Peoplemovers on the Road
Conducted in: 2005 - 2008
The Transumo (TRANSition to SUstainable MObility) mission is: to accelerate/ encourage the transition to sustainable mobility. This will be achieved by initiating, and establishing for the long term, a transition process that leads to the replacement of the current, supply driven, mono-disciplinary technology and knowledge infrastructure, with a demand driven, multidisciplinary and trans-disciplinary, participative knowledge infrastructure. The transition to the new knowledge infrastructure leads to advances that help to strengthen the competitiveness of the Dutch transport sector (‘Profit’) and to preserve and improve spatial and ecological (‘Planet’), and social (‘People’) aspects of mobility.
A transition is ‘a long-term structural change in a societal (sub)system that is the result of co-evolution of economic, cultural, technological, ecological, and institutional developments at different scale levels (Rotmans et al., 2000)’ – or in other words: a fundamental change in culture, structure and acting. Examples of successful Dutch transitions include the switches from:
• coal to natural gas as a dominant source of energy
• stemming water to accommodating water
• an industrial to a services- and knowledge intensive economy.
The Transumo framework, the focus of the People Movers on the Road project will be at the integration of automated systems with other traffic – breaking from the tradition of thinking in dedicated lanes for these types of systems. If, where and with what type of traffic mixing is possible will be determined in the project; as well as commencing the development of the required (sensory) technology and the set-up of applicable operational conditions.
The project will validate and demonstrate the possibility of the integration of automated people movers within the urban context and sharing roads with other forms of transportation. For this purpose multiple partners from a broad background are involved: a city (Almere), a public transport operator (Connexxion), knowledge institutes (Erasmus University, TNO and ANT) and industrial partners (Mobileye, Sick GmbH, Ibeo and Frog).
The project corresponds to a policy theme of the European Commission and is linked with a number of European projects and networks (a.o. the CityMobil project). The project offers the partners to intensify these contacts and strengthen the national and international knowledge infrastructure for Peoplemovers and Automated Transport.