Education and Science, Estonia, Technology, Transport

Self-driving buses could offer a solution to the last mile of public transit by taking riders from a regular public transit stop to their homes. Automated, remote-controlled bus service could markedly reduce the costs of the last-mile service and improve access to public transit.  

Ralf-Martin Soe is in charge of a project being implemented in collaboration between the Tallinn University of Technology and the Tallinn city government, which seeks to put a self-driving bus in operation in the Estonian capital for one year. The same would be done simultaneously in several cities of the Nordic region. The project is led by Helsinki and projects like this have been tested already for four or five years, Soe said.

This summer, self-driving buses operated between a tram stop on Mere Boulevard and the Tallinn Creative Hub, main venue of the EU presidency events in the Estonian capital, for a limited period of time when tram traffic was discontinued for track upgrades further down the route. The demonstration runs of self-driving buses became possible solely thanks to the absence of trams and the area being closed for vehicular traffic at the time.

Soe said that the trials about to begin next year would be conducted in a more real-life-like environment.

"We wish the bus to come into contact with real traffic, we wish this testing period to be longer and we wish to realistically link it up with public transport services," he said.