# Criteria for Route Evaluation of Automated Buses
## 7 Conclusions  
The automated bus is part of the future of mobility. To enable the operation of automated buses in public spaces without drivers, the technology must be further developed, especially in Germany. In addition to vehicles, the planning of such operations, and route selection, among other things, is an important building block, since the ODD is crucial, especially for automated driving level 4. As part of a study by [PERSON] et al., a process model was developed for the introduction of automated buses, which included an evaluation model for route selection. The aim of this paper was to determine the criteria for such an evaluation model so that evaluation procedures could be selected and implemented on this basis. In the literature, there are some standards and works on criteria that influence the route selection of automated vehicles. However, the publications generally refer to automated vehicles, do not consider practical applications or expert opinions, and do not allow for weighting. For this reason, an expert interview and a case study were selected as methodologies for determining the criteria for route selection by automated buses. On the basis of 13 expert interviews, with experts from different sectors, a total of 53 criteria were identified and categorized into must-have, should-have and can-have criteria based on the frequency with which they were mentioned. Each criterion that was mentioned at least once by an expert was taken into account. On the basis of the experts' assessment of the influence of the criteria, the criteria could be weighted. This is the first study to develop a weighting of the criteria for route selection for automated buses, enabling prioritization and ranking. In the context of the case study, the city of Kothen in Saxony-Anhalt (Germany) was used to examine the extent to which the criteria could be collected using public data. Public data were chosen because they were easiest to collect in the early planning phase in which the criteria were used. Furthermore, this followed the example of [PERSON] et al. [29]. On the basis of the case study, it turned out that the weather-related criteria and the number of satellites could only be determined for each city and not for each street. Therefore, the criteria were collected at a higher level for the whole service area. This decision was made because these criteria could not be collected at the street level, but only at the city level, for every city in Germany, according to public data sources. Since it was also not possible to determine the data on the number of days with fog and dust, as well as information on low sun conditions and dirty roads, only 44 criteria were used for the route evaluation of automated buses. This decision to remove these five criteria from the catalog of criteria was made because these data could not be collected using public data, and this should also be the case for all other cities in Germany. The description of the methodology and the results show that a joint group discussion after the individual questioning of all experts would have been helpful to improve the weighting of the criteria. Furthermore, an additional area could have been analyzed in the case study to increase the generalizability of the statements. These are two further tasks for future research. However, the data sources used were mainly those that should be available in every locality, which is why the result based on the city of Kothen can also be applied to other cities and areas. With the help of this weighted criteria catalog, the following practical fields of application are possible:  
* Use by public transport authorities and transportation companies to evaluate the entire service area with regard to the use of automated buses and to prioritize suitable routes at an early planning stage. * Use by manufacturers of automated buses to identify future development needs. * Further development and refinement of research institutes to improve the quality of the evaluation.