Comment by dpkirchner
15 hours ago
This exists in a way -- I'd wager every city has a commercial service that will shuttle you to, say, the airport. They're not cheap, however.
15 hours ago
This exists in a way -- I'd wager every city has a commercial service that will shuttle you to, say, the airport. They're not cheap, however.
Yep. And it's indeed a good model for this mode of transportation. And they ARE cheap.
For example, in Seattle I can get a shared airport shuttle for $40 with the pick-up/drop-off at my front door. And this is a fully private ADA-compliant commercial service, with a healthy profit margin, not a rideshare that offloads vehicle costs onto the driver. And a self-driving van can be even cheaper than that, since it doesn't need a driver.
Meanwhile, transit also costs around $40 per trip and takes at least 1 hour more. And before you tell me: "no way, the transit ticket is only $2.5", the TRUE cost of a transit ride in Seattle is more than $20. It's just that we're subsidizing most of it.
So you can see why transit unions are worrying about self-driving. It'll kill transit completely.