[rfrec0n]

> One average US citizen produces around 20 tons of CO2 per year. A bus needs 3 of them working full-time. This completely dwarfs the emissions due to fuel use.

Are you trying to say that these people wouldn't already exist without the bus? So everytime we commission a new bus, 3 fully grown licensed drivers appear in a flash of smoke from the storage compartment of the bus?

[cyberax]

> Are you trying to say that these people wouldn't already exist without the bus?

No. They would be doing other productive things. But right now, they have to spend their productive power on driving buses.

This is simply a huge waste of human potential.

[matchbok]

Are you a troll account? Or a joke? Can’t tell. Either way the sanctimonious rants devoid of facts are entertaining.

[cyberax]

Have you seen the bike bros? Now _that's_ sanctimonous.

[nayuki]

And individual people driving themselves is not a waste of human potential?

[cyberax]

Nope. Because cars _save_ _time_.

Car commutes are shorter than transit commutes in well-designed cities.

But even otherwise, you don't need a dedicated full-time driver.

[rfrec0n]

> cars _save_ _time_ Cars only save time if there aren't very many of them. Look at Northern Virginia, at 3 A.M you can drive 10 miles in 10 minutes because the roads are direct and have high speed limits, but that same drive would take close to an hour during the day.

[zip1234]

What do you consider to be a well designed city?

[mastersummoner]

Why not plan ~ten years ahead and expect these buses to be self driving then?

[cyberax]

Do a mental experiment. Suppose that you have technology that can make buses drive themselves.

First, you want to solve the problem of long bus intervals. It's still not economic to just buy more buses because they require a lot of power to run and do tons of road damage.

But you can make buses smaller! And by making them smaller, you can run them faster without incurring a lot of useless overhead.

Heck, you can just idle, dare I say _park_, these unused small buses when there is no demand. And since it's so easy to manage the fleet this way, you can make personalized buses for every passenger.

Hmm... It really reminds me of something...