[spaceywilly]

My view on Waymo and autonomous taxis in general is they will eventually make public transit obsolete. Once there is a robotaxi available to pick up and drop off every passenger directly from a to b, the whole system could be made to be super efficient. It will take time to get there though.

But eventually I think we will get there. Human drivers will be banned, the roads will be exclusively used by autonomous vehicles that are very efficient drivers (we could totally remove stoplights, for example. Only pedestrian crossing signs would be needed. Robo-vehicles could plug into a city-wide network that optimizes the routing of every vehicle.) At that point, public transit becomes subsidized robotaxi rides. Why take a subway when a car can take you door to door with an optimized route?

So in terms of why it isn’t a waste of time, it’s a step along the path towards this vision. We can’t flip a switch and make this tech exist, it will happen in gradual steps.

[ianburrell]

Automated taxis would still be stuck in traffic. Automation gets couple times in capacity, but the induced demand and extra cars looking for rides and parking will mean traffic.

Automation makes public transit better. There will be automated minibuses that are more flexible and frequent than today's buses. Automation also means that buses get a virtual bus lane. Taxis solve the last mile problem, by taking taxi to the station, riding train with thousands of people, and then taking more transit.

Also, we might discover the advantage of human powered transit. Ebikes are more efficient than cars and give health benefits. They will be much safer than automated cars. Could use the extra capacity for bike and bus lanes.

[rootusrootus]

> There will be automated minibuses that are more flexible and frequent than today's buses.

In my sleepy metro area that has at least mid-tier respectable public transit (by US standards only), otherwise known as Portland, I think a lot of the routes would be better served by minibuses than full size. I wonder how the economics work out on that. Maybe dominated by labor? Tri-met drivers have a reputation of being paid handsomely as they gain seniority.

[ianburrell]

I'm also in Portland. In the US, bus costs are dominated by labor. It makes sense to use full size buses if paying for driver. For main routes, more automated buses would be best option. But there are cross town routes that should be served with minibuses. Especially ones feeding MAX stops.

[sagarm]

If everyone in NYC tried to commute in a single-occupancy vehicle, there would be gridlock -- AVs or no.

[rootusrootus]

> Human drivers will be banned, the roads will be exclusively used by autonomous vehicles

I basically agree with your premise that public transit as it exists today will be rendered obsolete, but I think this point here is where your prediction hits a wall. I would be stunned if we agreed to eliminate human drivers from the road in my lifetime, or the lifetime of anyone alive today. Waymo is amazing, but still just at the beginning of the long tail.

[xnx]

> I would be stunned if we agreed to eliminate human drivers from the road in my lifetime

It basically happened for horses.

[rootusrootus]

Did it? I did a cursory search and it seems like many places still permit horse-drawn carriages, just not on limited access highways. Sometimes with fairly onerous licensing and operational requirements (speed limits, poo management, etc), but still allowed.

[xnx]

I think that will be how human-driven cars are in 30(?) years. Rare, but allowed with restrictions.

[anigbrowl]

Horses don't vote.

[xnx]

Neither do cars?

[anigbrowl]

Drivers, however, absolutely do. And I do not see enough drivers voting away their own ability to drive any time soon.

[semiquaver]

A few years ago I would have (and did) considered the notion that manually programming was about to turn into a quaint relic and computers would be writing 90%+ of code preposterous. Once an alternative becomes obviously superior things can change very fast.

[xnx]

Right, I was pointing out that at some point there was probably a horse-rider constituency as there is a driver constituency today.

[Jblx2]

Is that:

- I would be stunned if we agree to eliminate human drivers from 100% of roads in the lifetime of anyone alive today.

or

- I would be stunned if we agree to eliminate human drivers from 10% of roads...

...or is there some other percentage to qualify this? I guess I wouldn't expect there to be a decree that makes it happen all at once for a country. Especially a large country like the U.S.. More like, some really dense city will decide to make a tiny core autonomous vehicles only, and then some other cities also do years later. And then maybe it expands to something larger than just the core after 5 or 10 years. And so on...

[rootusrootus]

That is a fair point, since it is fairly safe to make "this absolute claim will never happen." And the person I replied to did say 'exclusively', which implies 100% elimination of human drivers. But still, I appreciate your nuance.

And in the spirit of that nuance, I will revise my statement slightly. I think it is entirely possible we will eliminate drivers on 10% of roads. We have rules that are analogous to that already with limited access highways. Though I would rate this still as unlikely, since such roads only make up just over 1% of all the roads in the US as it is. Not sure what the % is for other countries, probably less.

> some really dense city will decide to make a tiny core autonomous vehicles only

Agree 100%, this kind of thing I do expect to see happen. We already have exclusions for cars altogether in favor of pedestrians, so the precedent is set.

[Mawr]

> Once there is a robotaxi available to pick up and drop off every passenger directly from a to b, the whole system could be made to be super efficient.

Fundamentally impossible. You're moving some 2 tons of mass in a 2x5m box on polluting rubber tires to move a single 100kg human.

I can always take whatever efficiency gain you've thought up and simply make the vehicle bigger, decreasing the cost and space used per passenger, and maybe even put it on rails, making it less polluting, and more energy efficient.

You can't engineer your way out of the laws of physics.

And don't even get me started on e-bikes.

[kube-system]

Only in lower density areas.

In high density regions, vehicles on surface roads can’t meet the passenger demand required. Even if you banned human drivers, the other human users introduce too much variability and delay (passengers loading and unloading, errant objects, cyclists and pedestrians, etc). Roll a dumpster in the street, and have a couple of jaywalkers, and the entire system crawls to a stop.

Controlled access is required to get even medium-high throughput. But these systems already exist, they are called personal rapid transit systems.