Anyone who comes to the Hanseatic city as a tourist usually experiences Hamburg as a densely populated city with a dense network of underground, S-Bahn and bus services. But Hamburgers, who commute through the city every day, know that it is not only on the outskirts of the city and at off-peak times that it becomes much more difficult to find suitable public transport.
Here, the city has relied on so-called on-demand offers for years. And they should also drive autonomously in the future.
A research project aims to explore the possibilities of autonomous vehicles that drive on demand. The Federal Ministry of Transport supports the research project with around 18 million euros, i.e. with about half of the calculated costs of 37 million euros for the applied research, which is unique in Europe. Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) handed over the funding decision to Lorenz Kasch, Managing Director of Verkehrsbetriebe Hamburg-Holstein (VHH) on Tuesday. The VHH operate 170 bus lines in Hamburg and the surrounding area and coordinates the project.
In the project “Automation of Hamburg’s on-demand offer with integration into public transport” (AHOI), a mixed fleet of autonomously and manually controlled vehicles is to be tested. The concept of on-demand shuttle buses, which is already well known in Hamburg, and autonomous driving are to be linked.
“In December we agreed with the federal government to develop the Hamburg metropolitan region into a mobility model region. Autonomous driving plays a central role in this,” said Hamburg’s Transport Senator Anjes Tjarks (Greens).
He announced that the project will initially be tested in the Hamburg district of Harburg. The system hvv hop (formerly: ioki) already exists there, with which holders of a local transport ticket can order a shuttle to the next train connection for a surcharge of two euros per journey. In the future, parts of the hvv-hop fleet will be on the move autonomously.
The 20 autonomous vehicles should be driving on the streets of Hamburg by the end of 2025 at the latest. In addition to the VHH, part of the project consortium are the transport authority in Hamburg, the Berlin software developer PSI Transcom GmbH, the Institute for Climate Protection, Energy and Mobility (IKEM) based in Berlin and Greifswald, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Transport and Infrastructure Systems in Dresden and the Technical University of Hamburg. The partners also want to work with the Association of German Transport Companies (VDV).
For the city of Hamburg, AHOI is embedded in an overall strategy: the so-called Hamburg cycle. By 2030, every citizen of Hamburg should be able to reach a public mobility service within five minutes from morning to evening. One wants to make this possible by supplementing the classic public transport network with on-demand offers. Autonomous shuttles played a key role in this, explained Transportation Senator Tjarks.
With them, the advantages of digital mobility can be optimally used. This includes, among other things, that unlike classic buses, they do not always have to drive, but only when they are needed.
