The service in the small northern city of Grand Rapids, known as goMARTI (Minnesota’s Autonomous Rural Transit Initiative), will run for 18 months and include an area across 17 square miles with some 70 pickup and drop-off locations. Five ADA-compliant Toyota Sienna vans will be used for the service and will all include an onboard safety driver.
The project is a partnership among the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), the city of Grand Rapids, Via, May Mobility and others.
“Via and May Mobility together believe that the broader promise of AVs lies in their capacity to transform mass transit through shared, public AV services like this one,” said Israel Duanis, senior vice president and head of logistics at Via. “There are so many potential benefits for shared, public AVs — including bringing more riders to mass transit, creating safer streets, and reducing operating costs — compared to single-use AVs.”
The project is in a similar vein as other on-demand, microtransit operations in other parts of the country, where smaller vehicles take the place of larger transit buses to better serve locations with little access to conventional public transit. And increasingly, public agencies and the private sector are exploring the use of autonomy in these applications, drawn to it by the significant operational savings when no driver is involved.
