FRA-Monst St Michel

Mont St Michel, France
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Veolia Transport has started operated six dual cabin buses produced by Contrac GmbH for shuttling visitors to Mont-Saint-Michel. Each of these unique vehicles has two driver cabins while a special gear module reverses the direction of transmission output so the buses can change direction without turning.
With about 3 million visitors per year, the Mont-Saint-Michel monastery is one of the greatest tourist attractions in France.

Prior to this year, visitors arriving in cars and coaches were required to park on the narrow road leading to a small island in the Wadden Sea of Normandy. Today, traffic has to stay on dry land and only shuttle buses bring tourists to the monastery. That sounds easy, but it was a huge technical challenge because there is no place for buses to turnaround at Mont-Saint-Michel. Bus manufacturer, Contrac GmbH from Wiesbaden, Germany, came up with an idea for a unique dual cabin bus.
The buses are based on the Cobus 2500, a 12.3 m long airport bus, which is equipped with an Allison 2100 fully automatic transmission. Two fully functional driver cabins with one common drivetrain allow two-directional operation.
DGS from Mainz, Allison’s main distributor in Germany, developed a special reversing drop-box module, which is directly mounted on the Allison automatic transmission and reverses vehicle direction without affecting the drivability. This compact and short design had a minimal impact on overall driveline length. Direction change occurs when the vehicle is at a standstill. The drop-box is engaged pneumatically from the driver’s cabin in use.
Development of the reversing transmission took about six months including construction of the first unit. The new reversing transmission can be combined with any Allison 1000 and 2000 Series fully automatic transmission.
The maximum speed of the shuttle buses at Mont-Saint-Michel is 70 km/h, but they are electronically regulated down to 50 km/h; while on the bridge they may only drive at a speed of 25 km/h. Over the next 12 years, each vehicle is expected to cover about 600,000 km exclusively in shuttle service.
The Contrac Cobus has a seating capacity of 18 persons and a standing capacity of 80 passengers.