Pods4Rail - D4.1 Description of Use Cases

The aim of the Deliverable 4.1 Description of use cases is to identify and describe potential use cases (UCs) for Pod systems. The definition of the UCs considers technological feasibility, environmental impact, economic viability as well as user and society centred design and operation. The main advantage of Pod systems is the user friendly transport of people and goods. Hence, the significance of UCs lies in their ability to pinpoint user requirements, emphasizing the essential fulfilment of system functionalities aligned with user needs. The approach of this task is to use diverging and converging methods to iterate from a wide spectrum of possible UCs to a more specific description of the most valuable UCs. As diverging method morphological charts were used to create a list of various UCs that were further detailed by mobility journeys. Through classifying and prioritising several parameters, each UC could be characterized. This converging method was used to manage the large number of UCs. Additionally, an analysis of synergies between identified UCs and derivation of technical parameters for transport unit (TU) and carrier was carried out. Task 4.1 shows that mainly three kinds of transport solutions have to be considered for Pod systems. Passenger transport UCs such as premium and individual transport services are highly relevant, since they can offer new services and better comfort for several user groups. For freight transport and combined (passenger and freight) transport, Pod systems offer new solutions for more effective, flexible freight transport and also for specific event-driven UCs. The identified UCs represent a range of possible and feasible UCs, even though further UCs are can still be realised with such a flexible system. Based on the technical overview of Pod systems conducted for D2.2, D4.1 determines potential UCs and their specific characteristics, which gives valuable input for the subsequent Task 4.2 (SWOT analysis), Task 4.4 (Functional Requirement Specification) as well as several follow-up work packages (WPs) such as WP5 (Business Case Development), WP7 (Pod Technical Concept), WP8 (Design Variants) or WP11 (traffic coordination).