Passenger experiences of an Autonomous Bus service: The MultiCAV project

This paper reports on a mixed methods study investigating the on-board passenger experience of one of the world’s first autonomous bus trials open to the general public. The MultiCAV project – branded publicly as Mi-Link – was an autonomous bus trial serving the Milton Park business park, Didcot, Oxfordshire (UK), and linking it to Didcot Station, in the town centre. To be of practical benefit, automation must be applicable to standard urban buses and routes. A 3km initial loop service with 9 stops was begun in February 2023, operating at up to 32km/h (the site speed limit). In May 2023 the two autonomous buses began an expanded service, linking the business park with the railway station 3km away in central Didcot. Both services operated in mixed traffic, including pedestrians and cyclists, on public roads with speed limits of up to 65km/h. Our mixed methods study utilised an on-board quantitative survey (n = 119) and post-journey qualitative interviews (n = 12) with passengers of the autonomous buses. Our findings focus on people’s experiences of actually using the autonomous buses; we consider several facets of the passenger experience: comfort, safety, ride quality, and comparisons to a non-autonomous bus. We analyse different groups within our sample, with a focus on the effects of participants’ technological orientations on their experiences of the automated bus. The paper concludes with a discussion of what wider-scale adoption of the new technologies could mean for passenger experiences and the transport system more generally, and how AV bus services might fit into future public transport operations to assist in reducing carbon emissions.