[clomond]

However, I think you should consider how autonomous vehicles enable better utilization of existing cars on the road. If you own a car, what % of the time is it sitting in your driveway idle?

Rather consider how with autonomous driving, when paired with services like Uber/Lyft enable a car to be active 80-95% of the time - driving folks around. This means that your cost “of the trip” can be significantly less once you factor how his affects vehicular depreciation.

[brudgers]

Peak demand at rush hour determines the number of vehicles necessary to achieve a given level of service. Self driving vehicles don't change the underlying mathematics of the job scheduling problem.

[kruczek]

Even so, on my way to/from work I'd estimate at least 50% of cars are still parked. That's 50% of space that could be gained.

[rbranson]

This would only be true if everyone commuted at exactly the same time or along the same route.

[axaxs]

You basically just described 'traffic.'

[mcny]

The goal I think is a complete ban on human driving on public roads. With that in place, maybe we can make significant improvements in traffic. I agree that the last mile will always be a problem though.

While self-driving cars are cool, I’d imagine self-driving subways would be easier. In New York, the f train in Queens hits a standstill because of problems in the d line. The air train at JFK has no driver. Why can’t we do this for MTA?

While we are at it, transit in the city should be entirely tax funded. N

We also need self-driving buses. The buses in Queens sometimes don’t show up for over half an hour and three show up at the same time. Why?

[rory096]

>While self-driving cars are cool, I’d imagine self-driving subways would be easier. In New York, the f train in Queens hits a standstill because of problems in the d line. The air train at JFK has no driver. Why can’t we do this for MTA?

Technical debt. The system is 100 years old and MTA can't contain its contractors. At the current pace work to install communications-based train control (CBTC) on every line (it's on the L) will cost $20 billion and conclude in 175 years.

Oh, and rules require having two drivers on the self-driving train anyway, who occasionally have to drive to keep proficient.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/why-d...

[gomox]

The 3 buses can go faster through their route if they move together as on average each one has to stop less times. It's possibly a case of a misguided metric (average route time or delay) driving behavior to undesirable local optima.

[axaxs]

Agreed. While self driving cars are 'cool', they are still massively impractical. We need a better, rethought transit system in general.

[njoro]

That is what I am considering when I say that it is already close to free. Those city, at least for those people, essentially already have self-driving cars because it is so relatively cheap to be driven.