Bus Drivers Shouldn’t Drive

Your bus ride may soon be getting a lot smoother. According to the Wired.com article “Look Ma, No Hands! Automated Bus Steers Itself,” California Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways (California PATH) have developed a magnetic guidance system that will allow a bus to steer itself. Bus driver’s still control acceleration and braking.

Magnetic guidance technology uses magnetic markers embedded every 1.2 meters (4 feet) down the center of the lane and onboard sensors to track them. Alternating the polarity of the magnets creates a code that a computer aboard the bus reads to determine the buses’ latitudinal and longitudinal position. A bus doing 60 mph can process data from 88 feet of roadway in less than one second, and the system is robust enough to withstand real-world abuse, says Wei-Bin Zhang, who leads the project. “Today’s demonstration marks a significant step in taking the technology off the test track … towards deployment onto real city streets,” he says.

In addition to smoother rides, the magnetically guided bus can reliably stop much closer to curbs than human drivers, in some cases stopping only 1cm from the curb. The article does not state whether these buses will be hitting real bus routes anytime soon, however the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority has taken a look at the project and determined it would cost significantly less than a new light rail system.