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ROCHESTER — The Med City Mover is riding out of town.

The one-year test of the low-speed, automated, electric, multi-passenger shuttle wraps up Wednesday.

“We had a really good test,” said Minnesota Department of Transportation’s Med City Mover project manager Cory Johnson. “When we start looking back at it, I think we have a lot of different experiences there. We are pretty happy with the test, so far."

The two vehicles that were part of the state-operated test started their 1.5-mile downtown loops last year, logging nearly 6,000 miles throughout the year. The goal was to test the vehicles in a variety of urban conditions, which included weather changes, construction projects and a variety of traffic conditions.

“There’s all kinds of different lessons from the project, from the way the technology works to how the riders responded, and then how it interacted with other drivers on the road,” Johnson said of the state’s first test of driverless transit on public streets.

He said input from some of the nearly 3,000 riders points to growing interest in driverless vehicles and their potential uses.

“We got a lot of survey data, with a good mix of opinions,” Johnson said.

The pilot project is in partnership with the city of Rochester, Destination Medical Center, Mayo Clinic, First Transit and EasyMile, with the goal of testing how the technology works for future transportation plans in the state.

The state footed the bill, which came in slightly less than the $1.5 million budgeted, with other partners providing various levels of non-monetary support throughout the year.

DMC Economic Development Agency Executive Director Patrick Seeb said the project demonstrated options for a small, downtown route that could complement existing and emerging transit programs.

“We began to see what a small, dedicated vehicle and vehicle route could look like,” he said, noting that future implementation could shift toward a driven vehicle to provide more flexibility, rather than a driverless option.

From the start, the slow-moving vehicles generated some online criticism.

The program started with the assumption that the vehicle would reach speeds of up to 15 miles per hour in the downtown 25 mph zone, but Johnson said the top speed ended up to be closer to 11 mph, which required a long, unobstructed stretch of street.

The shuttles’ sensors were frequently stymied by perceived obstacles, which could include rain, leaves and construction barriers.

The result led to unplanned stops and hampered potential shuttle speeds.

Johnson said such issues aren’t going to be an obstacle for the state’s continued work to better understand automated vehicles and their potential uses throughout the state.

A similar automated shuttle project using different technology hit the streets in White Bear Lake this month, taking on a more suburban route, and a pilot program for a free, on-demand service using self-driving vehicles is slated to start in September in Grand Rapids.

“We are going to continue to try to learn as much as we can, as fast as we can,” said Johnson, who also serves as the state’s connected and automated vehicles program lead.