Marketing:

With the advent of any new technology, hesitancy from the general population can be expected. One of the greatest obstacles to overcome with the proliferation of autonomous vehicles is gaining trust from passengers in the safety of the technology. The 2022 research paper Towards autonomous public transportation: Attitudes and intentions of the local population by Carina Goldbach et al. explores the concerns people have about autonomous public transportation and how fears can be dissuaded. Goldbach finds that “the participants were significantly more willing to use a public AV if there was an employee overseeing the operation of the bus and ready to interfere by taking over the control compared to using a public AV without employees on board and only digitally provided customer service (Goldbach et al.)” These findings are incorporated into the system and include employees on the buses to oversee their operations. While this does come with some additional labor cost, it will make passengers more comfortable and it will aim to reduce the number of bus driver jobs displaced by the implementation of this technology.

Attempts to implement autonomous bus systems in the United States have historically been met with resistance from bus driver unions. The 2018 Metro Magazine article Transportation workers form coalition to stop driverless buses in Ohio reports on the pushpack from bus drivers to the proposal to automate the bus system. According to the Transport Workers Union of America (TWU), “An empty seat at the front of an autonomous bus can’t: assist in an emergency, help senior citizens get on board, call 911, give directions or CPR, or go off-route due to an unexpected danger or crisis, including a terror attack (Metro).” According to the 2022 Reuters article Autonomous vehicles need stricter rules -U.S. safety group, labor unions David Shepardson reports that many labor unions argue that autonomous vehicles should be held to higher safety standards. John Samuelsen, head of the TWU told lawmakers, “AV technologies that haven’t been properly evaluated and scrutinized by independent federal safety regulators, technologies that attempt to cut corners to address their own limitations, and technologies that are intentionally designed to displace workers should all be suspect (Samuelsen).” This will be considered while implementing the proposal. The goal of this project is to alleviate poverty, which cannot be done as effectively if jobs are displaced.

Funding:

According to the site, Grants for Buses and Bus Facilities Program, in 2022 the Infrastructure law provided $409.3 million in grants for improving US bus infrastructure. One potential grant this project could receive is from the Federal Transit Administration’s Enhancing Mobility Innovation project. This is a competitive grant of $2 million rewarded to projects that use technological advancements to improve mobility. It would take many such grants to completely fund a fleet of autonomous buses, but this grant exemplifies the type of funding opportunities that are available.

The main expenses for this project will be the cost of purchasing the buses and developing the technology. According to the 2018 proposal, Electric Buses in Cities by James Firth et al., an electric bus could cost $570,000 each. Using electric buses requires a more expensive upfront cost than a diesel bus which can cost from $400,000 to $500,000 each. Over time, these costs would be recuperated by a reduced fuel cost. The 2020 paper Costs and Benefits of Electrifying and Automating Bus Transit Fleets by Neil Quarles et al., examines the expense associated with replacing an existing bus system with electric and autonomous vehicles. The paper concludes that electric buses would be expected to become cheaper than a diesel bus costing $400,000 in 5 years after adoption, assuming a 15% decrease in battery cost in that time. The downward trend in the cost of electric vehicles is not the only benefit in implementation, “Electric buses can also provide various social benefits that do not appear in an agency’s budget, via improved service quality, public health and other environmental benefits, and public perceptions (Quarles, et al.)”

Replacing an entire fleet of buses in a major city would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. At this stage, the technology should be tested with a small fleet of vehicles before scaling up. A 2020 program in Columbus Ohio, detailed in self-driving shuttles called the Linden LEAP cost $2.3 million and serviced 4 stops with 2 shuttles. This is a good baseline for an expected cost for the project. 3 buses at $570 thousand each would cost $1.71 million, with an additional $400 thousand for development brings the total cost for a proof of concept autonomous bus system to $2.11 million.