Sunderland Advanced Mobility Shuttle

This project will help define a more sustainable future for urban mobility. It builds on the North East's long-term strategy to develop expertise in the AV ecosystem, from fundamental design to trial/demonstration and enhances regional leadership in addressing operational challenges to deployment.

It will research, build, trial and evaluate the feasibility of deploying a level 4 autonomous remotely supervised, zero-emission passenger mobility service in the City of Sunderland, increasing connectivity between a key transport interchange (bus, rail and metro) and two high-volume destinations: the University of Sunderland City Campus and Sunderland Royal Hospital, via an Intelligent Transport Corridor (ITC). Operated by an established transport provider, it will build on and deliver significant operator and end-user benefits within the Sunderland Smart City programme.

Passenger carrying Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) will undoubtedly have low future operational costs, suitable for use in 24-hour operations like hospitals or university campuses. This project advances a 'one-to-many' safety supervisor model for AVs, improving commercial viability of subsidised/unviable routes, addressing driver shortages, lowering fares and stimulating modal-shift to low-carbon, autonomous public transport.

The trial will be delivered by a fleet of autonomous zero-emission shuttles, along a 5km route, integrating with and supplementing existing public transport provision.

The service will be underpinned by cyber-resilient 5G-enabled remote supervision, communicating in real-time with ITC/Smart City infrastructure and the regional transport control room (UTMC, where teleoperations will be based). This will ensure traffic optimisation for all road users (especially shuttle users), ultimately enabling a remote supervisor to safely supervise many shuttles.

**What we will deliver:**

* Demonstrating, with evidence, how autonomous low-carbon public transport can operate in a real-world city environment, driving modal shift, making low-carbon mass transit viable, increase choice/availability, increase accessibility for mobility impaired people and delivering benefits within the Sunderland Smart City programme;
* An exploitation plan, making the case for further investment and expansion to other identified routes, including a business model and deployment/scaling plan for a sustainable shuttle service locally and regionally;
* Taking partners from technology development to service development, including identifying upstream/downstream supply-chain, highlighting any gaps therein.

**What makes it innovative**

* Integration with the existing Intelligent Transport Corridor and Smart City infrastructure.
* Demonstrating the potential for operators of level 4 autonomous public transport services to ultimately enable a remote safety supervisor to work with multiple shuttles.
* Live operations in a city centre, high traffic environment.
* Quantum-secure cyber-security layer on a low-latency private 5G network.