Leading transportation software systems developer PTV Group is part of a project that will help Norway’s capital city prepare for the anticipated widespread use of autonomous vehicles (AVs) and other new urban mobility trends.
Oslo’s local public transport authority, Ruter, has contracted the Danish multidisciplinary consultancy COWI to develop a model for driverless transport in the capital, and PTV will be providing the software tools required for the project’s transport planning and modeling.
COWI has been selected to identify potential opportunities, risks and implications for urban and transport planning in Oslo and Akershus that may arise from AVs and other new mobility trends. Various future scenarios will be examined using PTV’s software, including:
What is the impact of driverless vehicles integrated into the public fleet on people’s mobility behavior?
What happens if everyone owns their own autonomous car so that conventional vehicles are steadily replaced?
What kind of autonomous sharing concepts should be implemented?
“The job is to develop a model that helps us understand the implications of new forms of transport and trends brought about by the introduction of driverless vehicles, for example,” explained Trude Flatheim, the Oslo project manager at Ruter.
Robin Huizenga (above), PTV’s business manager for traffic in Benelux and Scandinavian countries, who is leading the company’s work on the Oslo project, said, “With our MaaS Modeller software platform, we can map and analyze exactly these kinds of scenarios. Many cities are simply waiting to see how autonomous driving will develop and are running the risk of sleepwalking through decisive future developments. We are looking forward to supporting the public transport operator in Oslo in setting the course for tomorrow’s mobility today, and then perhaps even developing a specific business model.”
André Kvalø, project manager at COWI, added, “There is a lot of potential for saving space and improving the environment in the sustainable cities of the future. The transport model will provide Ruter and the City of Oslo with better tools to make decisions and create incentives and guidelines for the introduction of driverless units.”
PTV is currently demonstrating its Mobility as a Service software systems, including the MaaS Modeller platform, at the Intertraffic Amsterdam event in the Netherlands. One of the company’s featured products is the latest version of its widely-used Optima traffic management software suite, which now improves vehicle flows with more accurate predictions, and reduces the complexity of systems integration.
