Video shows future of self-driving public buses

Last week on this blog I wrote about self-driving vehicles and talked to Brett Fusco, from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, about what such vehicles could mean for Philadelphia. After that blog post ran he handed along this video of a town in Greece, Trikala, where an automated bus is being test-driven in a European Union pilot program. I thought it was pretty cool and worth sharing here. The bus is kind of slow and small, but it is in operation right now and might offer a glimpse of what a ride on a SEPTA bus might be like some day.

Fusco noted that driverless vehicles require a detailed scan of the area they're traveling through. For a private vehicle being used the way we use our cars today, that's a lot of information to maintain. For a mass transit vehicle driving a limited, repeating route, it might be more feasible, he said.