Driverless shuttle pilot program coming to downtown Austin

Driverless buses could soon be circulating in Downtown Austin, the Austin Monitor’s Caleb Pritchard reported Tuesday. Area transit agency Capital Metro plans a rollout of six self-driving, electric minibuses as part of a yearlong pilot program for the vehicles. The initial fleet of shuttles, which can hold up to 15 passengers, will circulate between Capital Metro’s Downtown station in front of the Convention Center and the Central Library.

The exact route of the shuttles has yet to be determined, but the agency’s tentative plans are for the buses to be at stops every five to seven minutes. The maximum speed of the vehicles is 30 miles per hour, Capital Metro Chief Operating Officer Elaine Timbes told the Monitor, but the agency hasn’t determined how fast its buses will run.

A Monday Community Impact story by Amy Denney reported that the first phase of the program will start in July and will test the buses sans riders for 60 days. Pritchard reported that passenger service is scheduled to start in the fall, and that the shuttle program could be fully operational by the end of the year. The shuttles will be free for riders for at least the first year.

Timbes said the service will retain a human presence in the form of customer-service attendants, Pritchard reported, adding that they would most likely be employees of McDonald Transit Associates; its parent company, RATP Dev USA, is a partner in the planned program and will fund initial testing and help offset costs for the duration of the pilot’s run, according to the Monitor.

Capital Metro CEO and president Randy Clark announced in a statement Monday that the program will be the “largest public AV bus pilot in the country,” Pritchard reported. Officials are keen on viewing the program through a tech-friendly lens; Timbes told the Capital Metro board that the pilot “is not only a transportation project, it’s a technology project as well.”

That line is in keeping with the city’s official enthusiasm for being at the forefront of tech-related transit development (or tech-related anything, really). Pritchard’s article reminds readers that, as reported by KUT-FM, Mayor Steve Adler pronounced Austin the “Kitty Hawk of driverless cars” on Twitter after Waymo revealed that the company’s first successful driverless test had been in Austin in 2016. More recently, Austin became one of several U.S. cities collaborating with Uber to increase the use of electric cars.

• Capital Metro gears up for no-pilot shuttle pilot [Austin Monitor]

• Autonomous shuttles will be driving in downtown Austin this fall [Community Impact]

• Ghost Ride: The First Fully Autonomous Car Ride Took Place in Austin Over a Year Ago [KUT-FM]

• Uber wants to get more electric cars on the road [Curbed]