A full size ‘driverless bus’ has taken passengers from Fife across the Forth Road Bridge for the first time.
A total of 22 people travelled from Ferrytoll Park & Ride in the Kingdom to Edinburgh Park Transport Interchange on the south side of the Forth.
The journey marks a major milestone in the development of ‘driverless vehicles’ in Scotland, also known as autonomous vehicle technology.
Fife ‘driverless bus’ passengers ‘not worried’
Operator Stagecoach hopes to launch a full timetable as early as this spring. That will offer 10,000 journeys a week across the bridge.
While the bus’s computer technology took care of driving the vehicle during the test, a ‘bus captain’ remained on board to answer questions and sell tickets.
Operator Stagecoach invited the passengers from a testing group to provide feedback.
The bus company circulated comments from passenger Fleur Dijkman, who was on the historic journey.
She said she “wasn’t worried at all” relying on computer tech, rather than a human driver.
“You wouldn’t know the difference between this and a normal bus from the driving,” she said.
Stagecoach began testing its driverless bus on the 14 mile route in April last year.
First full sized driverless bus service in the UK
The CAVForth project’s fleet of five Alexander Dennis Enviro200AV should become the first registered service in the UK to use full sized autonomous buses.
It comes after the official launch of a separate smaller, driverless bus in Inverness in October.
Louise Simpson is project manager at Stagecoach.
She said: “We are really excited to have reached this next major milestone in our project plan to deliver the UK’s first full sized autonomous bus. That has seen us successfully carry a group of passengers on one of the new buses.
“Until today, only project team members had been able to trial the autonomous service.
“We welcome any views they have to ensure we deliver a great, inclusive, and accessible service to our customers when we launch in the spring.”
Conversation