Futuristic driverless pods could soon ferry people to hospital on disused Greater Manchester railway line

Driverless pods could take people from Bolton town centre to hospital along a disused railway line. Bolton Council, along with along with Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) and Dromos Mobility Ltd are to spend up to £200,000 on a feasibility study of an on-demand, 24/7 self-driving system running on a decommissioned railway line connecting the transport interchange to the Royal Bolton Hospital.

Earlier this year, a council bid was successful in a government funding competition for automated mobility schemes which enabled UK organisations to apply for a share of up to £40m of cash. A report to Bolton Council’s cabinet member for transport, said: “Dromos Mobility Ltd, Bolton Council and Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) propose to conduct a feasibility study over 11 months to outline, display and cost a potential connected autonomous mobility system connecting the Bolton Transport Interchange to the Royal Bolton Hospital.

“In part it will use decommissioned railway lines with the potential to expand and integrate the service via the infrastructure and mobility projects as identified by Bolton Council.”

The report said current transport connections between the town centre and the hospital resulted in ‘crammed services during peak times and inefficient use of resources in off-peak hours’. The report gave details of the new technology.

It said: “The Dromos system can build new transport systems based on small autonomous electric vehicles providing private and comfortable on-demand, 24/7 service, with lighter infrastructure requirements. It can be built and operated 50 per cent cheaper than existing rail-based services and requires 50 per cent less space.

“This unique cost structure will allow it to run public mass transport systems that do not require subsidies. Each pod would have an estimated average travel party size of 1.3 people and would reduce emissions per trip to zero. Dromos say they will use artificial intelligence to ‘predict traffic volumes and patterns and develops alternative routings for the vehicles to allow for a traffic-jam free operation’.

The feasibility work will consider a similar project in Cambridge.