Passengers’ Experience of Travelling with a Full-Length Automated Bus and Expectations of the Future Public Transport System

Report, 2021

The report summarizes the findings of a user study conducted, in which passengers’ experienced travelling with a full-length (12 metre), fully automated bus on a test-course that included nine simulated everyday traffic situations. The report also, based on the findings, disseminate how passengers’ view automated busses in the future public transport system i.e. their positive and negative expectations of the public transport system after automated busses have been implemented.
Method: The users’ experience was created by allowing 22 participants travel with a fully automated bus on a test course with nine simulated everyday traffic situations. Furthermore, the automated bus experience was also used to trigger the participants expectations on how automated busses in the future might or might not change the public transport system. Data on the participants’ experience was collected post-experiment and included questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The quantitative data was analysed using descriptive statistics and the data from the semi-structured interviews was analysed using a thematic analysis.
Findings: The findings show that most participants experienced the ride with the automated bus as very positive. Most participants also experienced the bus and its driving behaviour as trustworthy, mostly since they experienced the bus as being competent, handling the simulated everyday traffic situations in a positive manner. Some also felt that after a while the experience of riding with an automated bus became mundane i.e. it felt like riding with a human operated bus which in turn was positive, since according to one of the participants -no one rides a bus in order to experience fun, it is a mode of transportation. The findings also show that participants expected several positive effects, on the public transport system, by implementing automated buses but they did not believe that automated buses would change their traveling behaviour to a great degree. The main reason being that merely implementing automated buses would not better fulfil their travel needs; their needs were to a high degree already fulfilled by the current public transport system. Another main reason was that the positive effects of automated buses were expected to be counteracted by external influences such as other road users. Finally, although many participants did not expect that automated buses would affect their own public transport travel behaviour to any significant degree, many thought that the implementation of such a system could improve travel in other use areas and that the automated technology could work as an enabler of new services that could radically improve public transport. The most common use area for automated buses that the participants saw, was in rural areas where the distances are long, and the departures few. Thus, the implementation of automated buses could help to increase flexibility and efficiency within the public transport system.
Conclusion: The participants were in general positive to the idea of using automated buses in the public transport system. However, just implementing automated buses would not improve their traveling experience to a large extent. However, automated buses could be used as an enabler for new public transport system solutions that could have a great impact on how public transport commuting is used i.e. a more individually adapted, efficient and flexible public transport system.