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by cozos 1430 days ago
This analysis reeks of confirmation bias. You don't need one personal car for every 3 people if you were to comparing busses with self driving cars. You would have a fleet, just like you do with busses. Here is something posted a couple days ago:

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/19/1111765630/on-demand-shuttles...

15 minivans replaced 6 busses, at a cost of 1.6 million to 1.3 million per year - but with much better coverage than the busses.

Of course this equation will look very different in big cities where economies of scale from mass transit kick in, but hey, small cities need transit too.

2 comments

There are no self driving cars … why would I compare buses to them?

But the minivan link was interesting.

Fleets of cars would require additional infrastructure being built (specialized parking structures, staging areas, etc) so would increase costs. At this point we're also talking about the theoretical extension (fleets) of a theoretical concept (self-driving cars) so basing this execution in reality seems fraught.