Rapid, as the system is called, kicked off in 2021 as a collaboration between the city, the University of Texas at Arlington and Michigan autonomous vehicle company May Mobility. It serves three dozen or so stops in and around the UTA Campus and is mostly used by students and university staff, who ride free. If you’re not enrolled or employed by UTA, you pay $3.
On a recent Wednesday in front of the UTA business school, we climbed into a Toyota Sienna minivan outfitted with May’s onboard AV driving system and settled into a back seat along with three other passengers. (Rapid is a ride-share service, so you’ll often have others in the vehicle with you.)
A human occupied the driver’s seat, and she manually steered us away from the curb and then around the corner onto West Fourth Street. During most of our mile-long trip up to the Mellow Mushroom on Center Street, the driver maintained control of the vehicle. This was according to our monitoring of a display that showed who – or what – was steering us at the moment. At all times, the person in the driver’s seat kept her hands hovering over the wheel, almost–if not actually–touching it.
Both autonomous and human-piloted portions of the drive were uneventful. We dropped off some passengers and attempted to pick up another who arrived a second or two late to the curb and was left standing as we pulled away. (AVs, it appears in this case at least, don’t turn around.) Overall, it felt like a way of getting around that, if not exactly futuristically stunning, was more efficient and pleasant than, say, a ride in a New York City taxi.
A Successful Run
Admittedly, looking mostly to be wowed may have been missing the point. “UTA’s Rapid project wasn’t just about adopting a cool technology—it was about exploring the future of transportation in a real-world setting, creating meaningful research opportunities and enhancing campus life,” explains Greg Hladik, the university’s executive director of auxiliary services.
In its four years, Rapid has generally proved the idea that autonomous vehicles are not too cool for school and attract a sizable swathe of users. Lately, Rapid’s four-van fleet has delivered up to 1,000 rides a week, says Frank Renwick, May's vice president of marketing and communications. “We’ve gotten a lot of usage out of it,” he says. “And a lot of people come back over and over again.”
Crucially, according to Ann Foss, Arlington’s Transportation Department planning and programming manager, there have been no accidents or injuries, and surveys show riders overwhelmingly feel safe on the road with Rapid. This includes miles when the computer is fully in charge, which Foss says exceed 90% despite the informal estimate based on the one ride we hailed.
Sometimes they may, in fact, be safer than if they were driving themselves. “I was riding in the AV and we were stopped at a red light,” Foss says. “The light turned green, the car started to go and then stopped quickly. We realized someone was running the red light, and we hadn’t seen that, but the sensors had and responded. The ability to monitor the surroundings and make quick responses is astounding.”
In fact, fully autonomous vehicles have racked up tens of millions of miles while being involved in far fewer accidents than human drivers. The 360-degree array of sensors is, of course, critical. May packs its vehicles, made by its partner Toyota, with an onboard computer that replaces the entire front passenger seat while, Foss notes, ignoring the distractions that cause many human-driven crashes. “They don’t check their phones or eat snacks like human drivers,” she says.
The AV Future is Still Unwritten
Another thing Rapid has done is run through its funding. Originally backed by a federal grant, it has cobbled together the last year or two of financing by combining local and regional nongovernmental funds and other support. But the money has run out and, as a result, on May 30, Rapid will pick up its last passenger.The reliance on grants highlights a major AV limitation: they don’t make money. The cars used by some companies, such as Waymo, cost upwards of $200,000 each. Renwick declined to say what May pays for its vans. There are also AI computing and maintenance costs, and, where safety drivers are used, wages.
The plan is for volume production to reduce vehicle costs, and for better technology to eliminate safety drivers. Fully autonomous unmanned vehicles already prowl the streets of a few U.S. cities, including Waymo robotaxis in Austin and May vans in Michigan and Georgia, but the fare revenues have yet to outrun the costs.
Dallas, Richardson and Frisco are among area cities that have shown interest in Arlington’s experience, Foss says. She adds, “The big hurdle now is the price tag. It’s a bit more expensive than a non-autonomous approach, and without external funding, that can be hard for cities to come up with.”
The departure of funding before the arrival of cost-effectiveness is not the end of Arlington’s AV odyssey, however. Sometime this year, May will partner with Uber to launch a ride-hail service that covers more of the city and won’t require sharing or limit riders to preset pickup locations. It will start with safety drivers, similar to Rapid, but if all goes to plan soon move to fully driverless operation and eventually expand to other cities, according to Renwick
For a little while yet, you can catch an AV by downloading the Arlington On-Demand scheduling app and heading to one of the Rapid stops. It’s a glimpse of what many people feel is the future of Dallas-area transit, as it’s already been practiced for four years, 110,000 rides and, to judge from our recent experience, delivering some pretty well-satisfied riders.
So will Arlington, long categorized as an oddity for its lack of mass transit, wind up being recognized as leading the way into that future? At worst, it looks like it won’t be too far behind, and at best, it’s been a legitimate pioneer with Rapid, a service that may have seen its day, but only after accomplishing its mission.
“Down in Austin, there are lots of AV companies in operation,” Foss says. “We think that’s the way things are going. We wanted our community to have that opportunity.”
