[rootusrootus]

It would take a non-trivial increase in funding, I bet. Like maybe 5-10 times the funding we have now. Take Portland for example, which has relatively decent public transit for an American city of that size. For any meaningful trip within the city, it takes 2-3x as long on the bus compared to driving a car. They'd have to run a lot more buses to make it competitive. That's expensive.

[arp242]

Replacing the entire fleet of cars with self-driving cars isn't cheap either; so both require a significant investment. So does owning a car for that matter: both in direct car ownership, but also public cost in road maintenance, health care costs, parking lots, etc.

With fewer cars it's a lot easier and cheaper to get quicker and better public transit going. I don't know anything about Portland, but in general going by bus anywhere is mostly waiting in traffic (i.e. cars) instead of actually driving. This is why some places have bus lanes, which do help, but in a limited fashion.

I don't know how it compares exactly, but it's quite complex and there are a lot of factors and I'm not so sure public transport ends up being significantly more expensive in the end.

[comte7092]

Trip length has more to do with stops and average speed rather than frequency, that is unless you are making transfers.

Trimet is competitive in downtown once you account for time spent looking for parking. The max is also pretty good when compared to rush hour traffic on the freeways.

[Balero]

Ok, so whilst I have some experience with US cities, this post is about the British regulation on autonomous driving. I can assure you that any substantial increase in local public transport (substantial being 25% or more, this is not a huge amount due to how much has been cut in the past decade.

Intercity transport really needs HS2 pushing through and increase electrification of other routes. This will speed up commuter routes and increase freight capacity.