Autonomous Healthlink: Providing seamless accessible travel between NSECH and the Northumberland Line

The project will study the feasibility of delivering a zero emission CAM system on a purpose-built route between Seaton Delaval Station on the new Northumberland Line and Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital (NSECH) in Cramlington.

The Northumberland Line is a nationally important passenger rail project linking the rural areas of Northumberland to the employment and facilities of the county's main towns and the wider urban areas of Newcastle and North Tyneside.

NSECH is a regionally important healthcare facility providing world-class care for critically ill and injured patients from across the northeast of England. Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust plan on developing the site to provide further services to patients, but a key barrier to their plans is the accessibility of the hospital site.

Despite being less than 2km from the new rail station, NSECH has limited access by public transport -- only two buses an hour enter the hospital site to serve the circa 100,000 patients seen annually and the 2,000 staff that work within the hospital, and there are no dedicated cycle routes and only one pedestrian route in / out of the site. The new rail station does not propose any link to NSECH.

The project will focus on the delivery of a CAM system on the land that separates the rail station and NSECH, and we have the benefit of the landowner supporting the study. We will compare this to the delivery of a 'traditional' mass transit public transport system in providing an accessible, low-carbon solution to the challenge of linking these two vital pieces of public infrastructure together.

Newcastle University, using its experience of delivering and evaluating previous CAM schemes, will develop an understanding of the user-centric requirements such as service delivery and accessibility to understand what could make this a successful and useable PT solution and sustainable service for the hospital, its staff, patients and visitors

The proposed Dromos system would see connected autonomous vehicles working both individually and as a 'train' along new, segregated infrastructure, offering a safe, direct, demand responsive and reliable public transport solution which could be delivered in a very short timeframe, yet with a level of privacy, accessibility and inclusion not possible through any other mode of transport on offer today.