The City Council has signed up for yet another experimental transport system for the city. The project goes by the catchy title “Multi-Area Connected Automated Mobility” (MACAM) and is focused on self-driving vehicles on the city’s streets.
The City Council says that the development project will bring automated shuttles ferrying passengers between Coventry rail station and Coventry University campus.
The Government has awarded a grant of £8.3 million, which will be matched by industry to a total £15.2 million.
This project will fund a centralised, Remote Monitoring Teleoperation (RMTO) centre, which will support a self-driving vehicle operation around various parts of the West Midlands, including a route between Birmingham International rail station and Birmingham Business Park through the National Exhibition Centre.
The RMTO centre will be where the project’s self-driving vehicles are monitored and controlled from, using 5G connectivity. The monitoring centre will be run by TfWM. It is not known where it will be located.
The Council states that the two new routes will be served by a mixed fleet of 13 automated shuttles. The project aims to make self-driving vehicle operations commercially viable and offset current technology and operator and driver costs.
The Government announcement states that the approved funding is for the control centre and it is not yet clear whether additional funding is required for the vehicles and other elements of the project.
Project partners include the National Exhibition Centre Ltd, Direct Line Group, Coventry City Council, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, University of Warwick, Coventry University, dRisk, IPG Automotive and West Midlands Combined Authority.
The lead partner, which has secured the funding, is Conigital Ltd which describes itself as “a Deep Tech, AI Driverless Vehicle Company. A full-stack “Lift and Shift” driverless vehicle platform for any vehicle.” The company has its headquarters at Birmingham Science park and a workshop at Coventry Techno Park on Parkside. The company was founded in 2015 with £1million crowdfunding.
This project is not mentioned in the recently approved Coventry Transport Strategy, which focuses on improving the bus system and trying out Very Light Rail.
Automated vehicles are a solution looking for a problem. Whilst there may be a role for them in constrained environments such as transport parks, docks and airports there is little advantage in having them on the city’s roads. Buses are not sexy but they do the job that the city needs and they will not be replaced by expensive novelty projects. In the unlikely event that this project is successful, it would completely undermine the Council’s favourite project, Very Light Rail. Why build an expensive track if you can just run vehicles on the road?
John Payne