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Hopefully this regulation materializes as a regulation on personal transit, rather than a regulation on autonomous transit. There's no reason a self-driving ca

Hopefully this regulation materializes as a regulation on personal transit, rather than a regulation on autonomous transit. There's no reason a self-driving car with one occupant is any less efficient than a manually-driven car with one occupant. If everybody starts sending their kid to school in a private waymo it's going to be a disaster, but right now everybody drives themselves to work in a private car and it already is a disaster. The Phoenix public transport director who hopes that waymo can bring people to the high-capacity bus lines and the lrt has the right idea. If the waymo (or Uber, or Lyft) app can integrate with public transit networks, that's the ideal solution. I look forward to a day where you open your ride-hailing app and you see options for "Uber all the way: $14, 18 minutes journey, pickup in 5 minutes" or "Uber+bus, $10, 20 minutes journey, pickup in 10 minutes" where the Uber+bus option syncs with the bus schedules and schedules your pickup with just enough time to catch a bus and schedules a pickup at the end of the bus segment of the journey.

joe_the_user 8y ago
Hopefully this regulation materializes as a regulation on personal transit, rather than a regulation on autonomous transit. That's the most sensible way to do things certainly. But the huge public resistance to regulation of this sort may mean th self-driving cars wind-up with no regulation and thus with the vast mess we can imagine. I mean, the average driver is going to get pretty angry with the idea that the coming of self-driving cars means they have to drive less. I mean, they spent their relatively scarce money on their car. So what happens? The US has shown a willingness to ignore the need for basic regulation even the results are miserable chaos. I can't think of a more likely circumstance to continue that tradition than the coming of self-driving cars.
Tiktaalik 8y ago
> The Phoenix public transport director who hopes that waymo can bring people to the high-capacity bus lines and the lrt has the right idea. This is a nice hope to have, but so far all the evidence I've seen is that Lyft/Uber competes with public transit, driving down public transit use and making the streets more congested. I would expect autonomous ride hailing would have an even greater effect.
- dmortin 8y ago
  It's about pricing. If automated driving gets perfected then a ride with an automated bus can be cheaper than with an automated taxi, because a bus have less cost per seat than a car.

joe_the_user 8y ago

Hopefully this regulation materializes as a regulation on personal transit, rather than a regulation on autonomous transit. That's the most sensible way to do things certainly. But the huge public resistance to regulation of this sort may mean th self-driving cars wind-up with no regulation and thus with the vast mess we can imagine. I mean, the average driver is going to get pretty angry with the idea that the coming of self-driving cars means they have to drive less. I mean, they spent their relatively scarce money on their car. So what happens? The US has shown a willingness to ignore the need for basic regulation even the results are miserable chaos. I can't think of a more likely circumstance to continue that tradition than the coming of self-driving cars.

Tiktaalik 8y ago

> The Phoenix public transport director who hopes that waymo can bring people to the high-capacity bus lines and the lrt has the right idea. This is a nice hope to have, but so far all the evidence I've seen is that Lyft/Uber competes with public transit, driving down public transit use and making the streets more congested. I would expect autonomous ride hailing would have an even greater effect.

dmortin 8y ago
It's about pricing. If automated driving gets perfected then a ride with an automated bus can be cheaper than with an automated taxi, because a bus have less cost per seat than a car.