Antonio Loro

Safe roads, free-flowing traffic, robot-driven taxis at your beck and call. But where are the buses?

Imaginings of the future driverless city often give short shrift to buses. Yet, as automated vehicle technology advances, buses will remain indispensable for moving large numbers of people through heavily traveled areas — even when automated, only so many cars will be able to squeeze onto busy roads. Moreover, buses are uniquely suited to exploit the technologies available now and soon to emerge.

When humans are driving, around 2,000 cars can flow past a given point on a freeway lane in an hour. With robots at the wheel that rate could double.

But bus rapid transit — buses running on exclusive lanes and administered other performance enhancements — can carry tens of thousands of travelers every hour. Automated cars simply won’t be able to cram together tightly enough to move so many people down a lane. Buses will still be the most efficient way to move people where road space is at a premium.

What if people shared rides in taxis instead? Based on their simulations of future scenarios in Lisbon, the International Transport Forum reported that if people traveled mainly in “TaxiBots” seating up to eight passengers, the average trip would be almost 20 percent quicker than in a present-day scenario. But simulations also showed traffic spilling over onto once quiet secondary streets. Those streets have the capacity to absorb increased traffic, but in doing so, they would become less welcoming places to live, walk and cycle.

Buses have another advantage: even the less advanced automation technologies that are already or soon to be available can be particularly useful for buses.

It may be a long wait until robots are capable of driving on any road, anytime — even Google has cautioned that this echelon of automation may be 30 years away. "But in the meantime, less sophisticated automated vehicles can drive themselves without human backup — in controlled environments. This strategy of simplification has enabled rail transit systems like the SkyTrain in Vancouver, Canada, to operate sans driver since the ’80s.

Even while automation tech is still in its adolescence, buses could run without drivers on protected lanes. And buses would eke more passenger mobility out of those lanes than cars could.

Spared the cost of driver labor — which makes up the bulk of bus operating costs — transit providers could massively upgrade service. Above all, driverless buses could run much more frequently, slashing the time you have to wait for the next bus to pull up at your stop.

There will be challenges, of course — helping bus drivers through the labor transition, for one. But the first cities to engage with those challenges and use automation to dramatically upgrade bus service will also be the first cities where citizens reap major benefits from automated vehicles.

Antonio Loro is an urban planner based in Vancouver, Canada, specializing in helping cities prepare for automated vehicles.