Having ridden the Google buses for 6 years, I can tell you this generally wasn't a problem. They were almost always on schedule (I'd say 95% with 2-3 minutes of

Having ridden the Google buses for 6 years, I can tell you this generally wasn't a problem. They were almost always on schedule (I'd say 95% with 2-3 minutes of planned departure) and never bunched up. You didn't really have a latency problem, because you knew exactly when you needed to be at the stop, and the bus would be there right on time. One bus replaces probably 150 car trips a day (assuming it makes ~3 runs, partially full. If you assume similar capacity utilization on cars (3 passengers), it would take ~50 car trips to replace those 3 runs, effectively putting 17 cars on the road for every bus currently in operation.