Students, faculty, staff and residents of the Vancouver campus of the University of British Columbia (UBC) will benefit from a new mode of travel starting next year, when a high-tech, automated electric shuttle pilot project will be unveiled on the sidewalk.
BCAA collaborated with UBC and Rogers Telecommunications as a research opportunity and provided funding with the Canadian Department of Transportation to be the first to provide free shuttle services to the public using unmanned vehicles.
The pilot project will operate two routes using EasyMile's EZ10 automatic shuttle model.
Highway 1 will travel along the sidewalk from north to south, through the sports center at Varsity Fields, between Thunderbird Boulevard and West 16th Avenue-from Thunderbird Parkade and Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Center to Wesbrook Village.
Route 2 will also provide a north-south connection, running approximately 2.2 kilometers on the East Shopping Center between University Avenue (the core of the academic campus) and Stadium Road. There are a total of 8 stations on Line 2, including UBC Bookstore, Hospital Alley, Brimacomb Building, the intersection of Thunderbird Avenue and the north of the intersection of Stadium Road.
BCAA shuttle bus route map: Highway 1 (red) and Highway 2 (yellow). (Daily Hive/Google Maps)
Route 1: UBC's Varsity Fields sidewalk, looking north from West 16th Avenue and Wesbrook Village. (Google Map)
Route 2: From University Avenue and UBC Bookstore, look south at UBC’s East Mall. (Google Map)
Although EZ10 vehicles are automated, they will still be operated by the operator. These vehicles will run at low speeds and can accommodate six passengers.
BCAA Shuttle operates for 12 months, Monday to Friday, from 8 am to 6 pm. The estimated frequency is every 12 to 18 minutes.
Given the nature of the project and the participation of the federal government through Transport Canada, the project is expected to receive the necessary final approvals.
Considering that the main purpose of the shuttle is research, not general mobility, TransLink staff have reviewed the project and believe it does not fall into their Independent Transportation Service (ITS) classification.
ITS service is essentially a private bus or shuttle bus service led by the municipal government, private operators or other entities, fully self-funded and operated. All ITS applications are supervised and reviewed by TransLink, and TransLink makes a decision based on whether the proposed service is likely to have a negative competitive impact on the passenger volume and finances of its public transportation services.
Examples of ITS previously approved by TransLink include free summer shuttles from Richmond, Three Cities, and White Rock, and short-term private Beyond-Shuttle services from Surrey to UBC.
Since BCAA Shuttle is not within the scope of ITS, TransLink staff noticed that the public transportation authority does not have the authority to supervise the service. But the staff said they are interested in seeing the results of the pilot project, because automation is seen as a long-term possibility for buses to get off the bus in 2050.
However, BCAA and UBC will require the provincial government to make amendments or exceptions so that automated services comply with the framework of the BC Motor Vehicle Law.
EasyMiles' EZ10 unmanned shuttle bus at the Vancouver Olympic Village, 2019. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)
EasyMiles' EZ10 unmanned shuttle bus at the Vancouver Olympic Village, 2019. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)
The same model of high-tech autonomous electric shuttle was unveiled for the first time in the Greater Vancouver area in 2019 as part of a free technology demonstration of the Vancouver and Surrey joint partnership to participate in the Canadian Infrastructure Smart City Challenge.
At the beginning of 2019, EZ10 vehicles were operated from Manitoba Street to Olympic Village Station along West First Avenue in Vancouver Olympic Village, and circulated demonstration riding in Surrey Civic Plaza.
However, Vancouver and Surrey ultimately failed to apply to the federal government for the construction of Canada's first two collision-free multimodal transport corridors for driverless vehicles.
The previous Canadian demonstrations of EasyMile were conducted between the Calgary Zoo and Telus Spark, as well as in the suburbs of Montreal and the Montreal Olympic Park.
During the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, Toyota operated a demonstration autonomous shuttle bus in the Athletes Village. The service was suspended midway through the Paralympics, after the automatic shuttle hit and injured a paralympic athlete with impaired vision-even if the operator was on the control device while Toyota's e-Palette model vehicle was driving at low speed .
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