The Inland Empire has a small shuttle bus full of great wishes.

It is electric, rising at 25 mph and can only take pre-specified routes set by Riverside Transportation.

But it's a trap - it drives itself, too.

As of Monday, Riverside commuters were the first in the country to ride a fully autonomous, publicly accessible bus deployed by city transport companies.

It's a step for public transport commuters, a huge leap towards the riverside, becoming the next motor city, or what the mayor hopes for.

“I want to say that my ambitions are no more than the ambitions of becoming a vehicle-made New Detroit,” said Riverside Mayor Lock Dawson. “The riverside is, we will do this in the 21st century.”

In October 2023, Riverside City Council approved a two-year pilot program to enable RTA to operate, staff and maintain three automated, fully electric Ohmio shuttle buses. The first bus started serving Riverside Municipal Airport this week, followed by a bus in downtown Riverside and another at the UC Riverside at the end of the program’s first year.

To date, other iterations of autonomous buses across the country have been limited to private roads or properties, or some places where drivers occasionally lend their hands or feet to routes. But officials said the entire route was drawn, with the people on the steering wheel being there, only the case from Riverside's situation, helping passengers help passengers and communicating with RTA headquarters.

While this experience shouldn't change much for passengers, it may still feel like signs of a significant change that is about to happen.

“Now, robots are trying to replace us,” said Patrick Gray, 32, a bus rider, recently stopped at the riverfront to wait for a traditional bus job. “I’m used to human actions, managing things, new eras of artificial intelligence and robotic items, and it’s just crazy. … It shows us that we are entering a different era of life.”

The program is funded by the Riverside Transit agency, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, OHMIO and the City of Riverside. As part of the deal, Ohmio moved its headquarters from New Zealand to Inland Empire City, establishing it as a company's research, development, testing and designated sales point.

Over the first five years, the company is expected to produce 500 to 750 buses, which will bring more than $2 million in sales tax to the city. Ohmio buses also operate in New Zealand, Australia, South Korea and Luxembourg. New York has a pilot program that ran for four months in the long-term parking lot at Kennedy International Airport, but has since concluded.

The plan will spend $2.5 million to transfer Ohmio's business to Riverside. The city and AQMD contribute $1 million each, and the RTA’s final $500,000. According to the city’s partner announcement, each bus sales are expected to generate approximately $26,250 in sales tax revenue for the city. As part of the agreement, Ohmio is committed to creating 25 local jobs in the first three years of the program.

One of the first staff to work on Ohmio bus was RTA worker Kimberly Quamina for 39 years. She learned the ropes of her new role on the bus for the next four months Tuesday morning as the riders started to get up and down.

"I hope to retire on one of the buses, and that would be great," Quamina said.

One of her passengers, Nataly Zuniga, said she and her family decided to take the "fun visit" bus after lunch at the Riverside Airport Café. During a ride on Tuesday, the bus stopped suddenly when it was discovered on the other side of the intersection, surprisingly Zuniga and other passengers.

"The detection is too far," Zuniga said. "I think they have to narrow it down, it detects anything, and that's where (the bus) stops."

Despite a sudden stop, she said she was safe on the bus and would definitely be willing to ride on the busy roads.

However, for now, their role in public transportation is in the suburbs.

“In places like California … these can help fill some gaps,” said Juan Matute, associate director of the UCLA Transportation Institute. “This offers another option because it’s another option when the passenger rates are lower to justify transit or what they want to radiate on smaller streets.”

Ohmio arrives at the riverfront and follows two other clean energy companies recently established in the city: Volto, which makes medium-sized all-electric trucks; and the Hyundai Rotem that makes hydrogen trains.

Ohmio's director of business development Zayn Mashat said buses will follow the city's existing electric vehicle charging infrastructure and will be charged overnight. At first, they will be traveling at a maximum speed of 15 miles per hour, but will eventually speed up, company officials said. According to Guzman, they will collect data and share it with the RTA, which passes it to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Department of Automobile comply with state and federal laws.

They also have sensors to detect the surroundings and are pre-programmed to stop, although they can be skipped as needed by someone.

"We are very confident that this will be a successful deployment and we have a special focus on the city council in terms of the security dimension," Guzman said.

Now that it starts and runs, travelers should consider Ohmio buses as the first or last stop on their journey, officials said. The first route is to run on the new route, and the two subsequent routes are expected to merge the new RTA route with the existing RTA route.