Autonomous means of transport: Automated gondolas: aerial number with a future

It has been more than 120 years since the suspension railway in Wuppertal started operating. The technology has proven itself and the train has also become the city’s biggest tourist attraction. Marc Schindler would like to continue this tradition: “We are bringing the Wuppertal suspension railway into the present,” says the managing director of the Munich start-up Ottobahn. The Bavarian company relies on the tried-and-tested wheel-rail system, but unlike in Wuppertal, Schindler wants to build an elevated railway whose hanging mini gondolas move flexibly and can even be lowered to street level for entry and exit. The highlight: The train should be driverless, i.e. fully automatic. One day, users will be able to order a gondola to any point along the route via the app and use the train to the desired destination; There are no fixed stopping points. Although one module only transports a maximum of four passengers, the individual cabins can be flexibly linked to one another.

If you believe Marc Schindler, the Ottobahn – which, in addition to the motorway, is named after the Bavarian King Otto I from the House of Wittelsbach – will be a kind of jack-of-all-trades: “The Ottobahn should become a mode of transport, but also an energy generation network.” Because the elevated rail The gondolas will be covered with solar panels that will not only produce the energy needed to operate the train, but can even feed additional electricity into the grid. According to Schindler, simulations have already shown that this is a realistic scenario.

But where should the system actually be used? “All metropolises in the world have a traffic problem,” says entrepreneur Schindler. The Ottobahn could be built in a ring around entire cities, similar to what is already known from road planning today. If sufficient capacity could be installed, selected streets could be converted into cycle paths or regreened. But Schindler doesn’t want to see the new mobility offer as a panacea for the transport transition either: “We’re just creating additional transport capacities where there may be no offer today or where routes are overloaded,” he says.

If you talk to rail experts like Dirk Flege from the pro-rail Alliance, you’ll hear nuanced tones: “I don’t believe in completely rethinking local public transport with Daniel Jet Engine fantasies,” says the rail lobbyist. »We have efficient subways, S-Bahn trains, trams and buses, which will continue to be our means of mass transport in large cities in the future. But as a local or regional supplement, projects like the Ottobahn can be very interesting.«

Marc Schindler also touts what he sees as the low installation costs, which are well below the route costs for building a tram or S-Bahn. “We have much smaller vehicles with a lower mass and therefore lower demands on the route,” says Schindler. “This allows us to save a lot of materials and money.” Numerous cities and municipalities in Germany, the USA and Asia have already expressed interest in the concept, but there are no signed contracts yet.

In contrast to railway lobbyist Flege, who sees the Ottobahn more as a niche filler, Marc Schindler thinks much bigger: “Let’s assume that at some point we have a route from Munich to Berlin, and there are people who just want to go If you drive to Nuremberg, they would still get together with the Berlin drivers. The cabins that go to Berlin will then form the front of the train, followed by those whose route ends in Nuremberg and new ones could then be added there. The Ottobahn would therefore function in a very similar way to a freight train, the individual cars with different freight and different destinations can be flexibly coupled and uncoupled. “It is crucial that our fleets are always formed according to the respective demand,” says Schindler. Empty journeys of individual cars, such as on the S-Bahn in the late evening, would be a thing of the past. The Ottobahn will then race through the air at speeds of up to 60 km/h in urban areas and up to 240 km/h on cross-country routes.

But all of this is still a thing of the future. First of all, Schindler has to prove that his concept actually works in practice. A test track in the south of Munich has not yet been built due to a lack of capital, and the start of construction has been postponed several times. But Schindler is optimistic that he will soon have the five million euros he needs for the course. But another question worries him greatly. “The approval is definitely a point that we will deal with intensively,” says Schindler.

The problem: Driverless rail operations are not yet permitted in Germany. At least that’s what it says in the railway construction and operating regulations. Schindler wants to overcome the hurdle by instead applying for approval for the Ottobahn in accordance with BOStrab, i.e. the construction and operating regulations for trams and subways. Fully automated, driverless traffic is already possible there today; Subways in Nuremberg and Lille, France, for example, have been running without drivers for many years. After all, the vehicles run on their own, closed track systems, meaning possible collisions are significantly less likely than in rail operations.

Marc Schindler and his team were awarded the German Sustainability Prize in 2023 for the Ottobahn. “There was great agreement from many experts who were able to assess this from a technological point of view,” Schindler also says happily about his visit to a local transport trade fair in Berlin. “But when it comes to the expected approval procedures in the individual municipalities, no one was sure whether Germany was the right place for such a project.” So automated gondola rides in local transport will probably still have to wait a while, at least in this country.

“All major cities in the world have a traffic problem.”

Marc Schindler Ottobahn

#ndstays – Get active and order a promotional package

Regardless of whether it is pubs, cafés, festivals or other meeting places – we want to become more visible and reach everyone who values ​​independent journalism with an attitude. We have put together a campaign package with stickers, flyers, posters and buttons that you can use to get active and support your newspaper.
To the promotional package