There may not be a driver on the bus the next time you board a bus in east Scotland.
From May 15, a fleet of five single-deck driverless buses will be plying the roads in the area, announced Stagecoach, the United Kingdom’s largest bus and coach operator, in a statement on Tuesday.
The service will run across the iconic Forth Road Bridge – one of Scotland’s major landmarks and a Unesco World Heritage Site.
The project, named CAVForth, is also the “first registered bus service in the UK to use full-sized autonomous buses”, said the statement.
Fully driverless cars are not legally permitted in the UK, according to The Guardian newspaper. A safety driver is required at all times in all autonomous vehicles, although the government is working on an updated legal and assurance framework, it added.
The driverless buses in Scotland will run the 22.5km route between Ferrytoll Park And Ride in Fife to Edinburgh Park Transport Interchange.
They will have the capacity to ferry about 10,000 passenger journeys a week, and will also have sensors enabling them to travel on preselected roads at up to 80kmh.
However, the buses will still have two staff on board.
One is a safety driver who will sit in the driver’s seat to monitor the technology, and the other is a so-called captain who will assist passengers with buying tickets, boarding and questions.
Stagecoach said that driver training is “well under way” with 20 staff completing training in the lead-up to the launch.
Scottish Minister for Transport Kevin Stewart, who noted that the project is an “exciting milestone”, said: “Our trunk road network can provide a wide range of environments as a diverse testing ground, and the ground-breaking and globally significant Project CAVForth will really help Scotland establish its credentials on the world stage.”
Stagecoach’s UK managing director Carla Stockton-Jones said the company is excited to introduce the UK’s first autonomous bus fleet in east Scotland.
“We are proud to be at the forefront of transport innovation with this project that marks a significant milestone for public transport, and we look forward to welcoming our customers on board in the coming months,” she added.
CAVForth is a joint project of Fusion Processing, Stagecoach, Britain’s biggest bus builder Alexander Dennis, Transport Scotland, Edinburgh Napier University and Bristol Robotics Laboratory. It is also partly funded by the UK government’s Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles.
Driverless buses are not a new concept. In 2021, a new driverless electric bus began operating in Malaga, Spain, in a project presented as a first in Europe.
In 2015, Singapore began experimenting with autonomous vehicles on the roads.
In January 2023, an autonomous minibus began ferrying passengers around Ngee Ann Polytechnic and between the campus and King Albert Park MRT station, under a partnership between the polytechnic and local autonomous vehicle start-up MooVita.
