Feasibility of Advanced Vehicle Control Systems for Transit Buses

In the course of developing automated vehicle-roadway systems, opportunities to deploy vehicle control systems at intermediate stages of development may emerge. Some of these systems may provide a significant efficiency or safety enhancement to existing operations with manually driven vehicles. Under certain circumstances, transit buses provide an ideal test bed for such systems. A feasibility study for the application of advanced vehicle control systems (AVCS) to transit bus operations is described. Past and present research relevant to automatic control for buses is explored, and specific operations that could be better performed by AVCS-assisted or controlled vehicles are recommended. A survey of feasible technologies for guidance and control of buses is also presented for different levels of automation. During the course of the study, interviews were conducted with several transit system managers in the United States to determine the level of AVCS awareness and interest within the transit community. The findings from these interviews are summarized.