Instead of turning cities off to public transit, these declining ridership numbers are only spurring more of them to undertake dramatic redesigns of their bus systems—and Olli and other autonomous shuttles, the thinking goes, can act as supplemental pieces to existing systems of public transit.

“We see a lot of cities doing bus redesigns right now, because their current model of fixed-route, fixed-schedule is not working very well,” says Ashley Z. Hand, co-founder of smart city advisory practice CityFi and the former transportation technology strategist for the City of Los Angeles. “An AV shuttle might be very complementary to redesigned systems by getting people to those connections in the first place.”
More>>