In an example, the autonomous vehicle (“AV”) can be configured among the other vehicles and railway to communicate with a rider on a peer to peer basis to pick up the rider on demand from a location on a track, like a railway, tram or other track, rather than the rider being held hostage to a fixed railway schedule. The rider can have an application on his/her cell phone, which tracks each of the AVs, and contact them using the application on the cell phone. In an example, the AV is configured for both on-track and off track operation with different operating parameters for on-track and off track, including speed, degree of autonomy, sensors used etc.