Comment by eikenberry
18 hours ago
The problem with buses is always not enough buses. If a bus came every 5 minutes you wouldn't need to spread out the stops as they would naturally spread out with fewer people getting on/off due to more busses. It would make transfers more tolerable, missing a bus wouldn't matter, buses wouldn't get packed around rush-hour, etc. Buses could be a great public transportation system but I don't think any city cares enough about public transportation to properly fund it. It's easier to pass single, large funding bill for some light-rail boondoggle than it is to continuously fund a working solution.
I think that's where BEV and L4 autonomy comes in once it's commodified. Buses are huge in part because of having to amortize the driver and that makes them very crude. An autonomous mini-bus that can fit 10 people would fit more organically into cityscapes, destroy the pavement less, be run at 20% of current headways, etc, etc. Honestly the only big issues there I can think of are seatbelts (lower mass means that it may decelerate much more rapidly than a normal bus in an accident) and accessibility.
If there is a case for a smaller bus due to autonomy, there is a case for no bus at all.
Ultimately public transport that doesn't get its own infrastructure (lanes, rails, or tunnels), is just a economic compromise to move people for cheaper than a car... It's not better for the user in any way.
And if it does need special infrastructure to make sense, it gets harder and harder to justify at all once autonomy is in the mix.