AI in coach and bus: Will it ever replace a skilled human hand?

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) is ever more established in the coach and bus industry, particularly among larger operators and groups.

For bus, it increasingly optimises timetables and scheduling and engineering workstreams. Meanwhile, The Coach Travel Group CEO Tom Stables recently told delegates at The Big Coach Conversation how AI is helping to leverage vehicle utilisation and the inclusion of late jobs into work tickets. He hints that its deployment across the group will continue to grow.

All very good. These (and others) are areas where a suitably trained AI tool can deliver quick wins that may alternatively be missed or require significant human input. Other laborious tasks would also suit AI. It is the future, after all.

The challenge for some smaller operators may be finding time to get to grips with the premise of its involvement with their businesses in the first place, as articulated at the same event by the head of one of those coach companies.

Nevertheless, optimisation of schedules, be they bus timetables and crewing diagrams or work tickets in coaching, is theoretically a money in the pocket exercise, but only if AI tools doing that are better than a human hand – something that is not always guaranteed yet.

There still may come a commercial benefit in this hypothetical situation, and many are those in the industry who have done well from early adoption of other innovations. Deployment of AI to engineering functions and data analysis is also established, where it is beneficial in maximising component life and identifying problems.

Expansion of AI to coach hire pricing was touched upon by Mr Stables. Some brokers have developed algorithms to produce ‘book it now’ rates. Artificial intelligence could already be involved in them. He references Uber’s relevance in considerations about what is charged to the customer.

Those with knowledge of bus scheduling and AI speak of using several years’ data to create the optimal output, although it is clear from some wider work done so far with AI that a final human check can still be beneficial in certain cases.

Few are the coach operators that are likely to release quotes without such an eye having passed across them first, regardless of how clever the AI is. Perhaps pricing is, and will stay, a step too far from the comfort zone to involve with AI for most operators, although it may be useful for simpler hires.

The many considerations aside, it is clear that AI is not just coming to the coach and bus industry; it is here already. Some will embrace it willingly, and others more cautiously. AI is unquestionably part of the sector’s future. But will it ever totally supplant the experienced hand of a time-served expert in their field? No. It will not.