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We need electric self driving busses or similar, capable of moving large amounts of people frequently without the parking and other traffic related stress.
by orliesaurus 9y ago
We need electric self driving busses or similar, capable of moving large amounts of people frequently without the parking and other traffic related stress.
- dogma1138 9y agoElectric busses self driving or not would not do you good in places where public transportation does not exist currently. Busses with drivers electric or not are easy to implement and we have them today, but many places still lack good (or even acceptable) public transportation links for many reasons including lack of investment, high car ownership rates or as far as cities lack of urban planning, especially for older cities that were not had to be rebuilt after WW2. Driverless busses would not really make a difference for any and many more root causes. They will reduce the cost of operating already existing bus networks with good traversability and optimized bus routes, they would not however magically help you to setup public transport where there has been none, in fact it might be more expensive to go driverless from the get go.
- XorNot 9y agoDriverless buses would basically have the benefit that we can replace the driver with a fulltime security guard and have nicer buses.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoPretty sure in uk security guards make more than bus drivers?
- inopinatus 9y agoThis only holds if you think driverless buses are simply a standard scheduled bus service with no human driver. But I can already imagine on-demand or dynamic bus dispatch/routing that could be an order of magnitude improvement in mass transit service level to some communities.
- dagw 9y agoI wonder what the cost breakdown is between driver salaries and buying/maintaining the actual buses for bus routes today. I suspect that just getting rid of drivers won't save huge amount money, especially since driver-less buses will no doubt cost a lot more than 'normal' buses.
- foota 9y agoI'm not so sure about this, I figure bus drivers probably make.. 40? 50? thousand a year. I'd imagine bus maintenance is smaller than that.
- atonse 9y agoIn union environments the make a LOT more. They probably cost organizations on the order of $150,000 each.
- kuschku 9y agoLol. Currently the average bus driver in a union-negotiated contract in Germany makes 29'000 EUR a year. Pre-Tax. Post tax, 21'000 EUR are left. Overall, a transit company pays around 45'000 EUR a year for a bus driver. Unionized.
- atonse 9y agoNot in the US. D.C. Drivers routinely make six figures after you account for all the ways they game the overtime rules.
- ant6n 9y agoThe driver is the main cost. Per bus you need multiple drivers to keep it running 16-20 hours per day, every day.
- dogma1138 9y ago
- amelius 9y agoHow about driverless taxi-cabs then? You could call them driverless rentals.
- dogma1138 9y agoThat's Uber+, the sad truth is that with current economic model most of these "ride sharing" apps use the driver isn't that expensive. Uber et. al are going for for the driverless because they know that the current exploitative model which ignores nearly every regulation isn't sustainable.
- wcummings 9y agoDon't harsh their mellow, HN thinks driverless vehicles are going to "solve" mass transit. As if the driver were the biggest problem.
- alacombe 9y agoYou under-estimate the power of public unions. There will never be any driverless public bus, even if it mean that the "driver" has nothing to do.