I understand that you're being glib about buses or trains, but the driver is a large part of the operating costs of a bus, and additionally driverless buses might make more frequent but smaller buses more economical.

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lazyasciiart 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

There are driverless light rails already, and there are cities that have built dedicated streets for buses which would be the first place I’d try actual driverless vehicles.

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mortenjorck 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The reductive "you just invented $existing_thing" framing is so tiresome.

There are so very many opportunities for a better surface transport system than buses. Dynamic routing and scheduling, capacity somewhere between a city bus and a taxi, and potentially better economies of scale all make this far more appealing than what exists today.

Also – and I know acknowledging this will not go over well in some circles – requiring an app and a credit card will go a long way toward keeping riders of a certain disposition off the vehicles. No, it's not a perfect proxy for who will and won't make riding unpleasant or unsafe, but riders will intuitively understand it even if they don't want to think about it, and it will make a difference.

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bluGill 3 days ago | parent [-]

> There are so very many opportunities for a better surface transport system than buses. Dynamic routing and scheduling, capacity somewhere between a city bus and a taxi, and potentially better economies of scale all make this far more appealing than what exists today.

Anyone who knows something about transit already knows this is false. the idea has been tried and failed for hundreds of years. What people want is predictable transit that is there when they want to go and gets people places in a reasonable amount of time. Nobody cares about other stops.

People hate dynamic routing because it means they never arrive at the same time and in turn they can't use transit at all unless they plan to arrive way too early. Most trips are time sensitive, that isn't just the trip time, but also they have to be someplace at a specific time.

People hate dynamic scheduling because it means they can't take spontaneous trips. They can't be late for their planned trip. They will miss the bus once in a while because something didn't go to plan.

What people want is predictable routes that run so often they don't need to look at a schedule. They can figure out how to navigate it. Places people want to be will figure out those routes and location where it is easy to get to.

Okay, what people really want is Star Trek style teleportation. The point is to be someplace fast, not the journey. This is impossible though, so we compromise. the best compromise for transit is frequent systems that run predictable routes.

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tim333 3 days ago | parent [-]

The Uber Pool, now UberX Share thing was quite good.

	▲	bluGill 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		For some, but the reports I've seen suggest that for many it was just a cheaper Uber, but customers complained and stopped using it if they actually functioned as a dynamic pool. They could stop for someone who was already on the way, but they could go very far out of the way to pick people up before people complained.