The stated reason for North County Transit District opting for the DMU's on tracks for the Oceanside - Escondido Sprinter service over running buses was labor costs. One driver on a Sprinter DMU could be hauling several times more people than with a bus.
You don't need fancy robotics to handle autonomous operation on a private BRT busway, of course; presumably this uses expensive sensor fusion to decrease the amount of special preparation (guiderails, wiggly wire, etc.) for 'legacy' types of automatic guiding and speed/stop control, and allow much less space (perhaps it will be as restricted as counterflow lane traffic at the Lincoln Tunnel) for the private ROW set aside.
Doesn't particularly add to the economics of the operation, in the sense several posters have brought up over in one of the truck threads about the driver still being present for all the mileage and having to be constantly vigilant the whole time the thing is 'autonomously' guiding. Be interesting to see how easy it is to service when the equipment requires emergency and scheduled maintenance, or suffers an event requiring remote recharge.
Not impossible to do, and do well, but I'll be watching a bit superciliously...
Connecticut Department of Transportation (CTDOT) will test a full-sized automated transit bus. A federal grant and project partners New Flyer of America Inc., Robotic Research LLC and The Center for Transportation and Environment (CTE) anticipate starting service in 2021 on the CTfastrak bus rapid transit corridor, a dedicated nine-mile route between New Britain and Hartford. Three 40-foot battery-electric Xcelsior CHARGE™ heavy-duty transit buses from New Flyer with Robotic Research’s proprietary AutoDrive® advanced driver-assistance system will be driven by a human operator on Hartford's streets, but normally will only be supervised on the bus private right-of-way, althouogh he or she can take control when necessary.
More info:
https://www.masstransitmag.com/alt-mobility/autonomous-vehicles/article/21143509/ctdot-scheduled-to-deploy-first-fullsize-automated-transit-bus-in-north-america?
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