Area Mobility Development for City of Boeblingen | Preliminary Study

Project description

The city of Boeblingen is examining the possibility of developing the “Rauher Kapf West” area as part of the reuse of the current IBM site. The connection of the development area to the peripheral city area and the city center, including the railway station, has been issued as a planning task. Considering the existing public transport connections, the development of environmentally friendly local mobility is a priority for the stakeholders involved. Due to the distances and terrain profile, the use of bicycles is a challenge for future residents of the district. Innovative means of public transport such as cable cars or autonomous buses are therefore to be assessed for their suitability as part of a preliminary study.

The preliminary study shows that the passenger potential analyzed for a long cable car variant to Schoenaich is far too low to generate a reasonable cost-benefit ratio. On the other hand, a short cable car variant in the form of a fixed-grip pulsed-movement ropeway could be interesting as a simple feeder line to the IBM laboratory area, especially as it could compete with an autonomous bus shuttle solution (on a level 4 basis) in terms of cost. However, in comparison to an autonomous shuttle bus variant, the pulsed-movement ropeway doesn’t have the same level of service within the IBM-Lab and IBM-Club areas. For the autonomous shuttle buses, a circular loop between the IBM-Lab area – IBM-Club area – Schoenbuchbahn would be considered.

Service description

The following topics have been investigated as part of the preliminary study:

• Passenger potential analysis incl. capacity estimations
• Development of different alignment options and station locations
• Cable car technology analysis incl. determination of preferred technology
• System design and determination of system parameters
• Analysis of the land use
• Evaluation of the alignment options incl. determination of preferred options
• Description and examination of alternative means of transport with qualitative comparison to the cable car
• Budget estimations of investment and O&M costs for the preferred options
• Qualitative and quantitative comparison of cable car vs. autonomous shuttle buses
• Conclusion and recommendation

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