Autonomous vehicles will not end Stagecoach’s employment of bus drivers, despite the group conducting the UK’s first trials of autonomously driven fullsize single-deckers.
It is two months into trials of a prototype installation of autonomous driving technology in an 11.5m Alexander Dennis Enviro200 test bed development vehicle at its Sharston depot in south Manchester
Next year Stagecoach East Scotland will operate five similar vehicles in public service every 20min between Ferrytoll park-&-ride in Fife and Edinburgh Park train and tram interchange in the western suburbs of the Scottish capital. Much of that corridor has segregated bus lanes, including the 1964 Forth Road Bridge.
‘Is this the end of the bus driver? No,’ says chief executive Martin Griffiths, ‘but it would be remiss of us to ignore new technology. We will explore the opportunities and risks that it presents.’
Stagecoach, Alexander Dennis and technology company Fusion Processing have teamed up to develop the buses, applying Fusion’s knowledge of intelligent sensing and control systems for autonomous vehicles, developed since 2012 on one- to four-seat cars.
The buses are being equipped to the internationally recognised Levels 4 and 5,…
