Movement Patterns of Electric Cargo Bike Commuters – First Insights from Field Experiments and Trajectory Analyses

Abstract. In addition to and parallel to the SERVUS project, the requirements for a new, agile, urban cargo bicycle with electric drive are identified through a targeted, scientific application potential analysis in the project "E-Cargo Bike - Accompanying Research" described here. These findings are then implemented in the SERVUS project in an agile development and production process. Several prototypes are built in the process. The new e-cargo bicycles should be able to be used both privately and commercially. They will be presented to users for the first time at events (IAA 2021) and rated by them. In addition, the longer-term allocation of the bikes to selected users enables a cross-comparison with existing e-cargo bicycle models. Finally, the substitution potential of journeys in motorized individual transport is estimated and projected using the example of Munich. A key for gathering further information on the abilities of specific electric cargo bike types is tracking experiments with various sensor setups of which the first attempts are presented in this research. Additionally, and by enabling a certain spatial accuracy of gathered GNSS data, we are able to match selected maneuvers of these vehicle types to selected types of the Munich transportation infrastructure. Besides trajectory shapes of maneuvers, we are able to incorporate travel time and delay variations depending on investigation areas and times of the day at selected urban locations for every inspected maneuver (at for examples differing intersection geometries with and without traffic light signals). Another aspect is the presence of bicycle infrastructure and its relation to the option of using mixed traffic modes.