Autonomous shuttle buses from the French firm Navya are now in active use on the campus of a French nuclear power plant, increasing frequency to 5 minutes, compared to the 15-minute frequency of the previous diesel shuttles. The plant’s 1100 workers can use the shuttles to traverse the 500 acre campus. The shuttles can carry up to 15 passengers at an average speed of ~15mph.

Similar technology from a competitor, EasyMile, is planned to be in service this summer at the San Ramon Bishop Ranch office park. T

he next big step will be routes that go past campus internal drives to run on public streets, potentially providing better last mile connections. These fixed route services are technically easier to provide than general purpose, anywhere to anywhere autonomous taxi services. If the pilots are successful, the autonomous shuttles could become part of the transit system in the relatively near future.

The device in the French trial has a single stair for passengers to enter a bus. For public funded services in the US, presumably autonomous shuttles would need to support access by passengers with disabilities following the Americans With Disabilities Act. This could potentially be done with a flip-down ramp, as with Muni buses, or perhaps level boarding platforms.