No sooner have the first pilot projects for automated public transit vehicles gotten off to a successful start than the news is coming in fast and furious. Munich, Herford, and St. Ingberg are just a few of the German cities where driverless systems are now set to transport passengers. And in Norway, the first bus route has even entered regular service that operates entirely without a safety driver on board. According to findings by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), such projects are more than just technical demonstrations. They are indispensable for the mobility transition.

Since April 2026, a driverless bus has been transporting passengers in Norway. Stavanger is the first city in Europe to receive approval from the Norwegian Public Roads Administration (Statens Vegvesen) to deploy autonomous buses in regular scheduled service without the need for a supervisor to ride along in the vehicle. This groundbreaking project has already completed a roughly four-year test phase. An autonomous bus has been operating on a 2.6-kilometer route with five stops in the city since

May 2022. Until now, however, the law required that a human safety driver always be on board for safety reasons, to intervene in case of an emergency. With the new decision from April 2026, this requirement is now being lifted for the first time.

Politicians also see public transportation as (partially) autonomous in the future: Federal Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder praised the Munich mobility project MINGA (Munich Innovation Network for the Design of Automation) as groundbreaking. The insights gained are intended to help create the legal and technical framework for the widespread deployment of driverless buses in Germany (Photo: Tobias Koch)