Pre-Commercial Procurement for developing self-driving buses - Case City of Helsinki
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Procurer
City of Helsinki
Object of the procurement
The public transport of City of Helsinki
Procurement value
5 500 000 euros
Procurement objective
To procure research and development for implementing self-driving buses in urban environments.
Procurement background
The city of Helsinki seeks to make public transport an attractive alternative for private cars. Automatically operating mini-buses are considered to improve the functionality of public transport. Self-driving buses have already been tested in many countries, but feasible systems capable of operating large groups of automated vehicles are yet to be developed. Helsinki has participated in the FABULOS (Future Automated Bus Urban Level Systems) project that aims to procure research and development for the prototyping and testing of smart technology for implementing automated buses for traffic. In practice this means the development and integration of applicable software, hardware and services.
Entities involved in the procurement
The project was coordinated by Forum Virium Helsinki. Other participating entities in the project came from the Netherlands, Greece, Estonia, Norway and Portugal.
PROCUREMENT PROCESS
Procurement preparation and the market dialogue
In 2018 the FABULOS project started an Open Market Consultation to gain insight on the state of the market and the future of the development of automated buses. In the same year FABULOS published an international request for tender to attract the leading companies in the fields of smart traffic and technology to take part in the tendering process.
After the request for tender was closed, the Pre-Commercial Procurement process started.The process was executed in three phases and it ended in 2020. In the first phase the feasibility of selected technologies and proposals were studied. In the second phase the most promising concepts were developed into prototypes and tested under laboratory conditions. In the last phase the first end products were verified and compared real-life situations. In Helsinki self-driving mini-buses were tested in the area between Pasila and Kalasatama.
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30.12.2021 at 10:42