Forum: travel.stackexchange.com
Tags: <transportation><automobiles><where-on-earth><factoids>
Title: Where can I try an autonomous driving car?
Question: I heard that in the Netherlands there would soon be a self driving bus, and this would be the first sharing the road with other cars.  There are also a couple of other places with autonomous cars, but they travel in dedicated lanes.  I think these things are amazing and will revolutionize transport. I can't wait to try it. Where can I find these?  I would prefer a car/bus sharing the road with other traffic, but if not possible trying one in a dedicated lane would already be nice.

Answers:
sents: text: I don't know about any place where you can already use a bus that shares the road with other vehicles, but in Rotterdam, the Netherlands there is a bus that drives autonomously on a dedicated lane with road crossings.
text: It is guided by a magnetic strip under the ground, but it is autonomously controlling its speed.
text: It has been doing this since 1999 already.
text: Image source
text: It's called the ParkShuttle II, and it is used to connect a business park to a nearby metro-station (the blue line in the image).
text: Image source More information about it can be found here .You
text: can watch a YouTube video shot from the inside here .
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/31883/ROIMaison
score: 30
sents: text: The autonomous one sharing public roads with other traffic in the Netherlands is the "WEpod" (link in Dutch) .
text: (image from Wageningen University's twitter feed)
text: As far as I know, they have been tested in the last months of 2015 and will be available for visitors to try out in May and June 2016, travelling between the Ede/Wageningen train station and the Wageningen university campus (around 8 km, at 25 km/h).
text: I don't know if they are planned to become permanent.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/11352/RemcoGerlich
score: 17
sents: text: This may not be the answer you were looking for in a stricter sense, but just to play the devil's advocate real quick: you could always go ahead and buy a Tesla or schedule a test drive!
text: I don't know if they are already up for rent anywhere
text: but you could always go ahead and schedule a test drive, which is free and
text: you'd share the lane with others
text: The autopilot has seen great feedback as far as I can tell.
text: Just remember, it's not 100% autonomous :D
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/16579/Patrick
score: 12
sents: text: Update 2016/03/23
text: As of today the system is operational and can be tested in Sion.
text: It runs on Tuesday - Sunday afternoons and there's a website with timetables and disruption messages as well as other important information.
text: The test will run until October 2017.
text: There's one driverless bus system to be launched in the old city area of Sion in Switzerland.
text: It is currently being tested and will be opened for free to the public in spring 2016 for a 2 year testing period.
text: The area in question is a mostly car-free pedestrian area, but I am sure that the interaction of the bus with the quite crowded pedestrian area is going to be interesting to experience as well.
text: (picture from above linked article by swissinfo.ch)
text: This system is quite comparable to a similar system that has been used on the campus of EPFL in Lausanne which had a public test period last year.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/8363/drat
score: 10
sents: text: There's the Heathrow Pod - little electric self-driving cars in dedicated lanes.
text: Image from ultra global PRT .
text: The Heathrow POD is free to ride between the T5 car park and Business Parking.
text: It runs very close to the end of the runway so you can sometimes get an excellent view of planes landing.
text: From within T5, follow signs to 'Heathrow pod'.
text: It's a fun thing to do if you have a bit of spare time at Heathrow (particularly with kids).
text: The company's website has an interesting downloadable software simulator which you can use to plan and simulate your own pod network.
text: If you don't mind it being a bit larger then lots of airports worldwide have automated guideway transit systems, some of which aren't so different to self-driving buses in dedicated lanes.
text: [ Image by LERK Update:
text: The BBC is now reporting that vehicles based on the 'pods' used at Heathrow are to be used for a trial project in Greenwich, where they won't have their own dedicated lanes: The first driverless cars to be tested on the streets of London will resemble the electric passenger shuttles currently in use at Heathrow Airport.
text: The group behind the project is currently adapting the pods for use on the roads.
text: It has yet to unveil the exact design but confirmed that the adapted vehicles will not run on dedicated tracks.
text: Greenwich is one of four places in the UK where driverless pods and public reaction to them are being tested.
text: Trials will also take place in Bristol, Coventry and Milton Keynes.
text: The £8m project is jointly funded by government agency Innovate UK and industry.
text: The Greenwich Automated Transport Environment project - or Gateway - will see seven driverless pods tested on the pavements around the Greenwich Peninsula, where the O2 Arena is based, from July.
text: London's first driverless cars based on Heathrow 'pods' , BBC News, Jane Wakefield, 29 Jan 2016
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/22037/A E
score: 5

Summary of the answers:
The WEpod in the Netherlands is a bus that drives autonomously on a dedicated lane in Rotterdam with road crossings. There is also a Heathrow Pod in the UK, with plans for it to be used for a trial project in Greenwich called Gateway.
The Netherlands alrady has driverless vehicles running. In the UK, there is a driverless system at Heathrow and the idea is to use this system as a basis for a project for London, starting in Greenwich.