Orlando wraps SWAN shuttle pilot. Will it come back?

Orlando has wrapped its test of an autonomous bus downtown, which featured positive reviews from riders even as the vehicle clipped Lynx buses twice.

The city launched the service in splashy fashion last year, hoping that the so-called SWAN would be a reliable and popular transit option for people looking to move throughout Creative Village — and a potential transit addition to other neighborhoods around town.

The pill-shaped vehicle drew more than 4,800 riders with most between 18 and 34 years old, said Tanya Wilder, Orlando’s transportation director, which circulated in Creative Village for six months.

“The initial results show that the majority of people liked it and felt safe, and they’d ride it again,” she said.

Now city officials are assessing the results and haven’t made any decisions about the future of the vehicles future in the downtown area, she said.

Joe Moye, the CEO of Beep, the Lake Nona-based company behind the buses, said he’s had conversations with the city and other groups around the region about other uses for the autonomous bus. More advanced models travelingat faster speeds should be ready to deploy in about two years, he said.

Those conversations range from other routes in Orlando, at the Orange County Convention Center or near the Kia Center, and popular Main Street districts like The Milk District and SODO.

“The answer is an emphatic yes,” he said.

Beep has run a shuttle route in the Lake Nona area since 2019, and last year also launched one in Altamonte Springs.

One common criticism from downtown riders, both Moye and Wilder said, was the slow speed the bus drives, which is between 13 mph and 15 mph.

The downtown route was roughly a mile around Creative Village mostly in the Lynx bus lanes. The Beep vehicle mostly drove itself, though it always had employees on board who could take over controls if needed.

The test wasn’t without bumps in the road.

SWAN was taken off the road in November, after it struck a Lynx bus. A crash report blamed the incident on the attendant on board.

The report concluded the attendant saw a green light for vehicle traffic and triggered the vehicle to move, even though it was in the bus lane with a horizontal stop signal displayed. It struck the right side of the Lynx bus, police said.

The shuttle also struck another Lynx bus in one of its first days in operation .

In the four-month stoppage, Beep retrained its attendants and also added a second to each bus, to ensure one can focus on the road, which the other talks to passengers

“Incident-free is an important statistic,” he said. “Certainly there were some learnings that we worked into our training and certifications of our attendants.”

Wilder said city officials are studying survey results from the test, and haven’t decided if and how the service will be used going forward.

“It’s too early to tell,” she said. “I think what it goes to show is we’re a city that wants to be innovative.”

rygillespie@orlandosentinel.com