Comment by cycomanic

> Sigh. People are WAAAY too accepting of urbanist propaganda. >

Sigh people just like to make statements without evidence to back them up.

> Buses are _barely_ more effective than cars. A regular passenger car with 4 people is more efficient than a city bus. An EV needs 2.5 people (these numbers are for the US). >

Evidence? Moreover you know that average occupancy rates of cars are around 1.5 [1], for short trips like commuting it's more like 1.1 [1] so that's a factor 2 off from your 2.5. So even if we believe your numbers you have to explain how you're going to increase occupancy rate by a factor of 1.5 to 2 before they become just better (not even blowing out of the water). [1] https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/ENVISSUENo12/page029....

Note I could not find numbers on buses, but trains in the above source have occupancy rates of 50%.

> The explanation is simple: > > 1. Buses have to drive _all_ _the_ _time_, even when there are few passengers. As a result, the average bus load tends to be around 10-20 people. And you can not increase the bus interval to compensate for it because it makes off-rush-hour bus commutes impractical. >

And robotaxis have to drive empty to and from the person they are picking up.

> 2. Buses have INCREDIBLY polluting components: 2-3 drivers for each bus needed to provide the service. They are by far the dirtiest part of the bus. This part can be removed with the self-driving hardware, but... >

Not sure how we should account for bus drivers, considering that even if they are not working as bus driver the person is still around (also should we include the emissions from all the engineers working on self driving tech at the moment then) . However your statement is also false in most western countries, at least green house gas emissions of private households are dominated by transport (i.e. Cars).

> A full self-driving bus also makes no sense. It defeats the main advantage of self-driving: door-to-door transportation. >

You're contradicting yourself. If the bus driver is the most polluting part of the bus (according to your statement above), then it would definitely make sense to get rid of them.

It would be great if your statement was true and robotaxis are the most efficient thing ever. I'd love to see well laid out evidence for this, but from what I just found your statement is not supported by reality.