> in fact many localities have already tried this with human drivers,
> and it's been an abject failure.
For the product being delivered (low speed, low latency, available only in specific areas), public transit is criminally expensive. I'm not surprised people prefer driving in suburban areas. If it was 1/10th price, or free, it becomes a lot more attractive. Free is impossible if you have to pay salaries to human drivers.
Driverless vehicles don't have to be 4-seater cars. They can be much smaller, like the Smart Car, or a single person enclosed three-wheeler.
> "For the product being delivered (low speed, low latency, available only in specific areas), public transit is criminally expensive."
This is true - the problem is that dynamic-dispatch transit is even more expensive on a per-passenger or per-ride basis, and both speed and latency are actually worse than status quo public transit.
It'd be one thing if the result of these projects have been "this is great but expensive", but the result overwhelmingly has been worse than fixed-route bus transit across every major metric.
Autonomous cars can improve the cost problem, but can't dramatically change the calculus on speed and latency. Likewise, autonomous cars can also solve the cost problem for buses, and better!
> and it's been an abject failure.
For the product being delivered (low speed, low latency, available only in specific areas), public transit is criminally expensive. I'm not surprised people prefer driving in suburban areas. If it was 1/10th price, or free, it becomes a lot more attractive. Free is impossible if you have to pay salaries to human drivers.
Driverless vehicles don't have to be 4-seater cars. They can be much smaller, like the Smart Car, or a single person enclosed three-wheeler.