ACCESS! Transformation paths to sustainable mobility

 

The interdisciplinary research group ACCESS! contributes to the development and implementation of sustainable mobility by integrating the topics of technology and infrastructure, mobility demand and supply, societal demands, and environmental and sustainability goals.

 

Mobility concepts should not only meet societal requirements, they must also fulfill the increasingly stringent environmental requirements established and issued by policymakers. When designing new mobility systems, the focus should therefore not only be on the further development of already known technological approaches, but also on the development of new and possibly unconventional mobility concepts. In addition to feasible and efficient drive concepts such as electric motors and fuel cells, holistic solutions that permit an intermodal transportation network and thus beneficial mobility systems are also relevant.

In the first funding period from 2017 to 2020, the research group ACCESS! answered the question of future mobility through an inter- and transdisciplinary analysis of stakeholder requirements and evaluation of future-oriented technology paths. The design of sustainable mobility systems, however, requires a long-term oriented system transformation beyond evaluation aspects. To achieve this, infrastructural, market and behavioral barriers as well as path dependencies must be overcome by implementing new, actor-centered and demand-oriented technology and mobility concepts. Starting from the previous analysis- and evaluation-oriented focus, the research group ACCESS! will further develop towards an implementation orientation in a second funding period starting in January 2021. The objective is to define transformation paths for integrated technology and mobility concepts and sustainable mobility systems with the objective of deriving recommendations for action for society, politics, business and citizens.

The ILR is participating in the research group ACCESS! by conducting an analysis of urban air mobility concepts. In line with the study area from the first funding period, the potential, advantages and challenges of air-based passenger transportation, for example in the form of air taxis, are being investigated for the Metropolitan Area Ruhr, Germany. The focus will be on an improved fleet utilization depending on the transportation demand. For this purpose, an agent-based transportation simulation is applied and optimized for the present scenario.

The following chairs and institutes of the RWTH Aachen University participate in the research group ACCESS!:

• Chair and Institute of Urban Transport Planning
• Institute of Aerospace Systems
• Institute of Psychology
• Research Group Gender and Diversity in Engineering
• Chair of Management Accounting
• Chair of Economic Geography
• Chair of Operations Management
• Chair of Cultural Geography
• Research Group of Technologies of Fuels
• Institute for Linguistics and Communication Sciences
• Chair of Urban Planning and Design and Institute of Urban Planning and European Urbanism