Breathing for Bad Birnbach: Autonomous e-buses are threatening!

The pilot project for autonomous e-buses in Bad Birnbach, which started in 2017, is facing the end. By September 2024, three of these innovative buses promoted over 110,000 passengers, the connection to the train station, which is located at a slightly outside the town center, was the most popular route. Despite these successes, the project will be discontinued on December 31, 2023, such as efahrer.chip.de reported.

An important reason for the preliminary end of the project is the financing problems. By the end of June 2023, the initiative project was underpinned from various funding, while Deutsche Bahn covered the costs. From 2024, the financing costs of Rottal-Inn, Markt Birnbach and Regionalbus Oberbayern (RBO) should be borne, but the annual operating costs amount to around 342,000 euros. Without new funding, the district and the market are faced with the challenge of letting these costs alone.

manufacturer withdraws

The manufacturer Easymile announced that it would withdraw from the passenger transport and to concentrate on air and shipping in the future. The operation of the shuttles on line 7016 will be discontinued from January 2024. Nevertheless, the connection in line 7015 between the train station and the town center should be maintained with conventional buses until March 31, 2024. Future steps provided for the e-buses to drive completely autonomously without supervision, with the first preparations have already been made.

Further information on the autonomous buses in Bad Birnbach are available on Br24