No Human, Fare Free and In Traffic

Headlines from the past week:

Waymo in Phoenix - hands free and engineer in back seat

Las Vegas AV shuttle begins with a glitch

Tampa AV shuttle to start public transit service in January 2018

and from Miami - Mayor with a big bus dream

What do these headlines have in common? Autonomous vehicles (AVs) that are shared - for transit or for pooled taxi-like rides - are moving ahead, well in front of the sale of fully autonomous private cars.

And, for now,  the rides are free though, we have yet to hear whether Waymo's Phoenix-area rides - with the engineer in the back seat - will be free or discounted. The Miami dream is way too far away to talk about fares.

In regular traffic and then an all-too-human driver ...

Here is a video with a reporter who was on the Law Vegas shuttle. The report includes "real people" concerns that the passengers expressed in the wake of the mishap of a very minor crash with a truck in the shuttle's first couple of hours of operation. The crash, by the way, was the fault of the human truck driver, not the AV technology. The shuttle was manufactured by Navya.

Florida shuttle coming after New Year's

The Tampa AV shuttle is being shown off this week at an AV summit. The cute AV will be in regular operation come January. The shuttle manufacturer is Coast Autonomous and the vehicle will seat 14 passengers and fit a total of 20. And the AV shuttle will be fare free.

The transit agency will operate the AV shuttle. This is actually Tampa's second experience with AV service. There was an AV giving rides at a science museum. That demonstration project started way back in 2015.


Miami mayor wants big driverless bus

The mayor of Miami has gotten cold feet for a large rail project. These come with scary price tags. Instead, the mayor is proposing a newly developed autonomous bus - a really big bus - that is touted as a train on wheels. It's like the AV shuttles on steroids with room for 300 passengers. Miami already has dedicated bus lanes. 

Now to read all of the articles, legislative bills, etc. starting to pile up this week.