Will we see self-driving buses on the new bus rapid transit being built in Pittsburgh?

PITTSBURGH — Work is happening right now on a plan to speed up travel between Downtown and Oakland.

A bus rapid transit (BRT) is going in on 5th and Forbes Avenues. There will be dedicated “bus only” lanes to connect the busy corridor.

Related >>> City leaders approve nearly $13M for Port Authority to connect Oakland, Downtown Pittsburgh

Just moments into an interview with Vincent Valdes, executive director of Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission (the group that decides how to spend federal transportation dollars, locally) Valdes brought up the idea of autonomous buses along the BRT route. He thinks we could see them even sooner than self-driving cars on the road.

“It makes sense to do it in transit. It’s a very focused application. You’re working in professional fleets,” said Valdes.

He told Channel 11′s Jennifer Tomazic he thinks we’ll see them in the next 10 years.

So she took that idea to the head of the Port Authority, whose buses will run on the Oakland to Downtown BRT.

Katharine Kelleman initially pointed to several autonomous shuttle bus pilot programs happening across the country. She didn’t say “yes” or “no” to the idea on Port Authority buses, but told Jennifer this:

“So as we look at autonomous future, it would be great to be able to free up that driver to provide that better level of customer service,” said Kelleman. “We would anticipate keeping an operator on that vehicle for that customer service touch.”

Kelleman said there is a lot of technology already available that they could put on buses to help with safety, even before self-driving buses come onto the market.

Stan Caldwell does a lot of research on technology trends in automated vehicles with his Traffic 21 Institute initiative. He works at Carnegie Melon University and invited Channel 11 to the Navlab, where they’ve been doing research on this type of technology since the 80s.

While they’re not testing any automated buses here, CMU is researching what automation would mean for transit.

“The role of the drivers will be elevated because they still have to take care of the duties of the passengers, maintaining safety of passengers and everything around the vehicle but they also will have to manage the technology,” said Caldwell.

Which is some of the concern for bus riders when Jennifer asked them if they’d ride an autonomous bus.

“I’m not sure,” hesitated Devante Blair, who takes the bus to work in Oakland, “because I still have to get past the self-driving cars.”

“I don’t know about that. When (the bus) turns onto to Murray from Forbes, it’s kind of hard,” pointed out a CMU student. “I think a human should do that.”

Precisely some of the kinks Caldwell says are still being worked out.

“I wouldn’t be comfortable getting to the point where we have driverless buses operating on the open streets with the technology that is out there now,” said Caldwell. “I think we still need humans to manage those complex situations but we should be using automation in order to make the systems more efficient and safer.”

City leaders approve nearly $13M for Port Authority to connect Oakland, Downtown Pittsburgh

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