Scania’s Sustainable City Solutions, future ready

Increased urbanisation is a trend that Scania has been keenly following for many years. Now Scania’s Sustainable City Solutions is ready for it.

It is now popularly acknowledged that we will see a rise in urbanisation globally in the coming years. As this becomes a reality transport solutions will need to adopt accordingly. “Cities will grow so much that it will simply not be possible for you to take your car into the city or to travel around within it” says Anders Grundströmer who leads Scania’s new Sustainable City Solutions.

”We need to make a really good urban transit system, one that makes it normal for people to use urban transit solutions instead of taking your own car” explains Grundströmer.

Door to door transport

Grundströmer explains that Scania’s aim is to create systems which will be able take people from door to door in a sustainable, quiet, comfortable and quick way. To do this, Scania plan to use their buses on main city routes and also smaller transport solutions including, in some cases, says Grundströmer, “electric bikes”. This will help to fulfil Scania’s ambition of door to door sustainable transport including the ‘last mile’.

Off peak sustainable transport solutions

As congestion becomes more and more of an issue Scania has looked for ways to put less strain on the urban infrastructure. One way is to manage deliveries to and from the cities. A key problem here is that they are using the system at the same time as people are going to work or school, this creates a lot of stress on the urban infrastructure. Off peak delivery takes place after peak hours, however, this does mean that if it takes place in the evening or late at night then the vehicles and logistical equipment must be silent.

Other solutions and possible problems

Grundströmer explains that other tests are in progress, using connections with traffic lights, dynamic lane separation and autonomous vehicles. Possible future difficulties are really to do with the current legal framework, he explains. “The technology itself is a challenge but Scania can handle it, it’s the politicians that will need to be prepared to change the legal framework to make a connected and autonomous systems a reality”.