[erikpukinskis]

> bigger vehicles and fixed routes are simply more efficient at transporting a lot of people in dense environment

Sure, for the most heavily travelled routes. Some fraction of trips—those where you're going to the same place, from the same place, at the same time as a bunch of people—fall in that category. Daily commute from a dense suburb to a metropolitan city center. Weekend trips from a dense city to a popular beach.

But for the majority of trips, a giant empty bus running several blocks away in the slightly wrong direction is far from the most optimal transport method, especially if you have a fleet of various sized driverless cars.

Centralized routes and large fixed vehicle size are generally not going to be a good thing for efficiency once we have autonomous driving.