What does the Mobility of Tomorrow look like?Aalen University students develop ideas for transportation of the future

How would E-Bike stations be accepted, for example at the roundabout on Rombacher Street? How could its usability be improved?

Tu, 15. September 2020

How do people best get from point A to point B in the Ostalb region? Students of Aalen University investigated this question and surveyed the transportation habits of the townspeople. The results came back: more charging stations for E-Bikes, car-sharing offers at Aalen’s hubs, an app to simplify the public transportation system and new park-and-ride options could improve local transportation in the future.

Within the scope of lectures from project management, quality management and sustainable development from Prof. Dr. Ulrich Holzbaur, students from the degree programme Industrial Engineering analysed the current state of transportation in Aalen, and developed different ideas for future mobility. They were supported by the Department for the Environment, Green Spaces and Environment-Friendly Mobility, Economic Development of Aalen, as well as the Agenda Group Weststadt.

In this way, the students researched Aalen’s main train station, the Wasseralfingen train station, the Aalen’s vocational school and Aalen University, among other hubs. Because these are often the destinations for commuters, they are especially good for mobility hubs, where a wide variety of transportation options need to be available. Among these are the rental bikes from before, as well as opportunities for car-sharing or park-and-ride offers.

The Aalener Weststadt helped the students and helped examine the public transportation habits of the townspeople in specific areas of the inner city, as well as the willingness to use alternative means of transportation. This showed that the majority of people surveyed typically use public transportation options relatively less. Above all, the people surveyed hope for a “mobility app”, to make using public transportation easier.

The students also prepared a mobility concept for Aalen University, including developing park-and-ride opportunities for students, for example. Besides the projects with Prof. Ulrich Holzbaur, another project group conducted research on the usage of the current charging stations for E-Bikes at the university roundabout for the lecture “Project Management” from Vanessa Vanini, a lecturer for Sustainable Development, and stAArt-UP!de-colleague Evelyn Neifer. They discovered that these are rarely used. For that reason, the students developed ideas of how to advertise that offer and make it more transparent to use.

All completed projects are connected to the  „Sustainable-Development-Goals“, which were agreed upon by the United Nations. Sustainable cities and communities are in the spotlight, just like industry, development and innovation, climate protection, as well as education. The goal of the project is to achieve a variety of mobility options in Aalen. The results will be presented to the responsible departments of the city, so that they can be further developed into implementable plans. In this way, the environmental, parking lots and transportation situation around the university and in the whole town can become more comfortable.