[patresh]

I think you're not seeing the full potential of such a system. Public transportation for now is very useful but over large distances can involve many changes, waiting times and inefficiencies. We could have a swarm of driverless cars taking in all passenger requests and computing the optimal dispatching of driverless cars. For instance pick up passenger A and B, drive to place C and drop off B who gets has another driverless shuttle pick him up a minute later, pick up customer D and drive to E. Since all shuttles would be aware of each other's locations, they can take that into account into the schedule computation and avoid jamming streets.

[skgoa]

This would not reduce traffic, though. In fact it would increase traffic, because now cars are transiting between revenue trips instead of waiting at the curb.

[iainmerrick]

It would increase traffic, but free up some parking space!