EcoBus links the region

30 decision makers from Southern Lower Saxony sign cooperation agreement with Max Planck scientists on modern mobility.

July 13, 2015

Professor Stephan Herminghaus, Professor Marc Timme and Andreas Sorge – all scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPIDS) in Göttingen – are currently developing the EcoBus project out of their mobility research. EcoBus is on its way to becoming a sustainable, integrated and publicly backed mobility system for urban and rural areas. "EcoBus will implement a door-to-door transport system with travel times matching customer requests and at affordable prices," says Max Planck Director Herminghaus. "EcoBus is going to complement the already existing, highly-frequented public transport corridors and will thus reinforce classical transit and cabs," Timme, a Network scientists and Sustainability researcher, adds.

How does EcoBus work?

EcoBus seeks to team up with regional transport companies to operate the vehicles (small and medium buses as well as taxis). Utilizing cloud computing, EcoBus efficiently batches the requests of several travelers and instructs the drivers accordingly to pick up and drop off passengers at their desired destinations.

A strong network for the Southern Lower Saxony Programme

To promote EcoBus, the EcoBus team at the MPIDS, together with Southern Lower Saxony Programme (SNiP) HQ, has been growing a network of  heads of municipal authorities, further regional public transport managers and Göttingen University researchers over the past months. Head of the SNiP HQ office, Dr Ulrike Witt, is “happy to see that the regional and local actors in Southern Lower Saxony enthusiastically support the  idea of the Max Planck scientists."

EcoBus ambassadors

"With signing the cooperation agreement 'Ambassadors for EcoBus' we, the municipalities, show our support for EcoBus from the outset, because mobility is a primary concern of ours", two of the first 30 signees, Wolfgang Nolte, Mayor of Duderstadt, and Klaus Becker, Mayor of Osterode am Harz, emphasize. Gerhard Melching, Mayor of Dassel, is the initiator of the first EcoBus meeting in the region. Melching stresses: "EcoBus enables our citizens to live where they feel at home."

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