One of the busiest cities in the world is that of Singapore. This island city-state that is unique to the world has grown and developed over the past several years to be one of the most active and successful cities in the world for people to live in and make their home. Many people who live and work in Singapore use public transportation for their everyday commutes. Unfortunately, as we well know, public transportation vehicles are some of the worst when it comes to pollution and congestion in a city. That may all change with the new launch that’s about to take place.

Singapore will be home to two new buses in 2018. These buses will be similar to your typical bus in that they will carry up to eighty people a t a time and have a designated route during busier times of the day, but they will be vastly different in other ways. These two buses, which have been develop by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, will both be self-driving solutions to the congestion problem. These buses will help reduce the need for so many vehicles on the road to help improve traffic congestion during the peak hours of travel.

To aid in the pollution reduction plan of the Transit Authority of Singapore, these two buses will be EV models that will be able to charge during each stop along their route. While this means the two will have a limited route to start with, if they are successful and there is a visible reduction in traffic and pollution there’s really no reason more buses won’t become EV models that are self-driving as well. This is the goal of NTU and the Transit Authority as these two public vehicles are used over the next few years.

During the off peak hours the two buses will be deployed based upon the commuter demands to provide the fastest route possible and maximize the number of commuters on board the vehicles. This will allow these buses to replace several regular buses that only drive on specified routes, even during the off peak hours. The ability to scale this project up should be the next step once these buses are able to provide the improvement in traffic congestion reduction and pollution reduction that’s expected to be the result of this test with these two test vehicles on the road taking their route.

This public transportation solution could be just the start of a widespread solution that brings us hybrid and EV solutions to the vehicles used for daily commuting while also giving the benefit of self-driving that can maximize the number of passengers and improve the time on the route. All eyes should be on this test once it begins to see how infrastructure and technology need to be used to improve the transportation needs of large cities to help reduce on road congestion and pollution. This will be one test I will be interested to see the results of in a couple years.