9 ms·

You are describing a bus company ;) "a shared fleet of cars continuously picking up and dropping off passengers within cities" And just like existing bus comp

You are describing a bus company ;) "a shared fleet of cars continuously picking up and dropping off passengers within cities" And just like existing bus companies, the self-driving ones will also require you to take a detour so that other passengers can be picked up or dropped off along the way. So the main novelty is that you eliminate about $0.2 per minute in salary, but in exchange you now have to maintain much more complicated vehicles with much more expensive replacement parts. Oh and have you ever considered that the same people that you hate meeting on the bus could also be combined into your ride? Except that now they are not 3 weirdos out of 80 people but 3 out of 4. So unless this is so expensive that most people cannot afford it, it'll have the same drawbacks that rich people currently hate about taking a public bus. I expect these companies to lead to more traffic, because afterwards you will have the regular poor-people bus and in addition the almost empty rich-people bus vehicles.

djannzjkzxn 7y ago
I’m wondering if you have ever ridden a bus, and also a shared Uber? The car gets you where you are going a lot faster than the bus, because you need to wait for at most 2 other stops instead of 17 or whatever, and you never need a transfer. Whether or not this argument convinces you, experiencing it yourself makes the difference obvious. It’s one of those things where you can actually do an experiment to find out the answer instead of just arguing about it. You could also try entering a destination into google maps and compare the estimated arrival time with bus vs Uber. The self-driving car will presumably be a similar experience to the Uber, but addresses the labor issues that are the main problem with that model.
- marapuru 7y ago
  Getting somewhere faster doesn't necessarily mean it's better. Recently I lost my car (I used to have a company car in front of my door, but switched jobs), now I am solely using public transport and my bicycle. It takes more time, doesn't really cost me anything more than having a car and because it takes more time I have more space to clear my mind. To let my mind wander for a while to process thoughts. I'm talking about distances that typically take 5 - 20 minutes by car, that are now maybe 15 - 40 minutes by public transport. See also: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mental-downtime/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mental-downtime/
  - tomashubelbauer 7y ago
    While a longer route with public transport is certainly an opportunity to let your mind wander (as long as it is not that crowded and you can autopilot transfers), it is still a forced one. You might find that's not a problem for you, and I believe you, but that's a privileged position to be in and you're the odd one out. Most people, I believe, would rather be in control of when they let their mind wander and when they get to their family or friends faster. I am not arguing against public transit here, I wish for a carless city as much as the next person, but I'm not blind to the fact that public transit is far from perfect and almost certainly not the full answer to a carless city.
  - animal531 7y ago
    If you're losing 20 minutes * 2 trips per day, that adds up to probably 7 days of lost time per year that you could have been doing something with.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - glutamate 7y ago
      Like, reading a book. Or listening to a podcast. Wait, I can do that on a bus too. Not every minute of your life has to be optimised.
      - msla 7y ago
        > Like, reading a book. Or listening to a podcast. Wait, I can do that on a bus too. Not on some of the buses I've ridden. We'd have to solve a dozen or so social issues before buses were reliably a good place to do relaxing activities.
      - feintruled 7y ago
        And of course some of the same people who complain of this lost time pay hundreds a year to join a gym to spend an hour running on the spot...
- asjw 7y ago
  > The car gets you where you are going a lot faster than the bus Of course, you pay more! It's even impacting the environment more, cities cannot plan for it and chose the path they should follow and ,in the end, why didn't you share your personal car with the people you know before Uber came along? Because you want a cab and a driver to - if it's necessary - share with people like you, not a shared means of transportation that's doing a service to a larger community
- Juliate 7y ago
  The Uber-like "pick me up where I am" is a pre-fit incentive that will be dropped later. I take buses regularly. Uber too. Taxis too. All in all, the de-humanizing/automation part that's getting traction from capital. It's not a strictly human/modern need that's being met, it's an addictive service (faster, exclusive) that's being sold and cost-optimized. You can be certain that the day Uber-automated-cars are the norm for transit, for cost/efficiency reasons, you will be kindly asked to join a specific pick-up point; and off-loaded at a specific location as well. Those locations will be computed & decided by the provider, not you (you know, bus). Unless you pay another premium (taxis).
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - andrepd 7y ago
    >it's an addictive service (faster, exclusive) that's being sold and cost-optimized. I'm not convinced it's being cost-optimised... Uber is the most unprofitable company in existence! Unless cost-optimising means undercutting competitors with dirt cheap labour and by burning unholy amounts of cash, on the order of billions per quarter.
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    What you describe is a car service with an automated driver. Car services have existed for decades, and saving $20-25/hr on a driver isn't really that big of a net gain. The biggest innovation Uber offered is app-based dispatch. There is a lot of skepticism that automated vehicles will ever happen without massive infrastructure changes that remove human drivers from the road in large numbers. The liability issues are huge -- accidents will happen and people will die. In a case where fault must be determined between an autonomous vehicle and a human driver, human judges / juries are going to overwhemlingly side with the human. If anything, automated vehicles will require more costly regulation than human drivers do. Car services are a hard business to make money in because the job isn't very skilled, so there was a lot of regulation in place to ensure those services were priced in such a way that they continued to be reliable. Uber sidestepped a lot of that regulation through creative accounting and VC subsidization, but my guess is that when Uber and Lyft implode in a year or two, much of it will be reintroduced to fill the smoking hole they will leave in last-mile transit since they put the taxi companies out of business.
- r_klancer 7y ago
  I don't know if my experience is usual, but readily ride buses and trains that air so crowded I almost have to physically force my way into them, and I take Lyfts occasionally, but I never, ever opt for the shared ride. Maybe it's just me, but something about sharing a ride with one or two random people in the back seat of a sedan just seems unpleasantly awkward. Whereas a bus has enough people that you're a face in the crowd. (context: US, Boston/Cambridge/Somerville area)
- wenc 7y ago
  A halfway solution is something like Via, which is "bus-like" for frequent routes. https://ridewithvia.com/ https://ridewithvia.com/
- camgunz 7y ago
  During rush hour where I live (NYC), hundreds and hundreds of people ride the same bus I do. If each group of ~4 had their own car, everything would break down, and I shudder to think of the impact on the environment. The main problem w/ the model is people having to travel non-walkable/bikeable distances twice a day. Until we invent teleportation, not a lot is gonna change that basic math.
  - CuriouslyC 7y ago
    New York is a special case and you can't use it to make general statements about transportation at all. Due to its density, not owning a car is pretty common in NYC, but unheard of elsewhere in the US. The vast majority of the population lives in low or medium density places where mass public transportation is a huge waste of time and effort.
    - camgunz 7y ago
      I think you're missing my point(s) a little. Most of the important tradeoffs between public transportation and individual automobiles are the same no matter the density, and it's all a function of how many people are "on the road" at a given time. You can cram 'em onto buses, or deploy a fleet of rideshares, but the core problem is moving billions of people non-walkable/bikeable distances twice a day. Grandparent's point was self-driving cars solves the labor problem, and thus the benefits of ridesharing totally outshine the benefits of mass transit. I'm saying I don't think a labor shortage is the main problem (no matter how much you think those drivers are making, it's not a lot). Rather, I think the problem is "every American worker gets a car and is transported ~16 miles twice a day" isn't scalable.
      - djannzjkzxn 7y ago
        To be clear, I think self-driving cars beat busses on quality of service. There simply isn’t a bus that exists that will take most people from where they are where they want to go. Dynamically generated routes beat fixed routes, because they get people to their destination. UberPool accomplishes the same thing, but uses more drivers per passenger than a bus, which leads to labor exploitation. Self-driving fixes that problem. And no, I don’t want to shut down the busses. I’m describing why so few people are using them, and why self-driving cars have a better chance of success. In fact, I think self-driving is a necessary ingredient for a public transit system that meets everyone’s needs in the US. I think buses are a natural park of a self-driving network - a dynamic dispatch system can use them on the most in-demand routes. Right now in America, the vast majority of people are driving solo to work. Even if self-driving vehicles merely double the capacity those vehicles handle, that seems enough to fix our transit problem.
- fxtentacle 7y ago
  Lucky me, I feel qualified to make a comparison here because I have traveled 20+ countries by train and bus, as well as taken 500+ Uber and Grab rides :) In many bigger cities in Europe, there are dedicated lanes reserved for public transport. You can grab an Uber and get stuck on the public lanes in a big traffic jam. Or you take the bus and arrive in half the time. Plus the bus is dirt cheap at a fixed-price $40 per month no matter how much you use it. I used to travel 12km by bus twice every working day and it took roughly 20 minutes per direction. Good luck getting an Uber ride for $1 per trip that'll average 36km/h = 22 miles/h through the rush-hour traffic in any big US city. Oh and don't get me started on the Berlin / Hamburg / Singapore MRT systems. Trains every 3 minutes with dedicated underground tunnels that usually arrive faster than it takes you to pay a parking ticket and get your car out of the 3rd parking deck. Plus, the Singapore MRT is so spotless clean and people are so careful and polite, I'd be willing to sit down with a blanket on the floor and have my dinner there. Eating in the MRT is forbidden, though. Also, I'm not sure if I had beginner Uber drivers untypically often or if they just have such a high turnover, but in 1 out of 4 rides the driver had problems finding me, despite having my GPS location and my street address. Having waited for 10 minutes only for the driver to then cancel and Uber support to scold me for hiding, I now usually walk to the bus stop and call the Uber from there. Much easier to find, even for beginners. But that kind of negates a big benefit that Uber was supposed to have, if they cannot pick me up where I am. And speaking of beginners, I have been in almost-accidents more often than I can remember, both with Uber and Grab. The driver is texting on his phone, or trying to readjust the app's map, not paying attention to the road, and then we have to stop tires screeching to avoid running over a cyclist. I have never ever had a bus driver as careless as about half of the app drivers. And then, there's the crazy aspect. When someone pukes in a shared bus, you can move to another seat. When your neighbor pukes in a shared Uber, you can only choose between accepting the smell or waiting 10+ minutes for the next Uber. Sadly, I speak from personal experience here.
  - flush 7y ago
    Thank you for sharing the life experience you've had on your travels, but this is a service based in San Francisco. Discussion would be more productive if scope was narrowed to the topic of OP.
- babesh 7y ago
  It isn't a max of 2 stops. It's a max of 2 pickups and 2 stops. Also sometimes you end up taking detours for the pickups and stops, not to mention waiting for the people to show up. Happened to me. I think the bus got to my destination first.
nwhatt 7y ago
I wonder how long it will take the average Bay Area commuter to find an adversarial driving pattern for this.
- TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  Cruise has been operating a pretty dense fleet continuously in San Francisco for some time. Of course those vehicles have safety drivers, but they’re already facing SF drivers. Honestly I believe a system trained on so many millions of driving interactions would tend to act like an average good driver in SF, and so would ultimately blend in.
throwaway9d0291 7y ago
There are a few very big benefits compared to buses: - The car carries fewer people at any given time, so needs to stop in fewer places. - The cars are smaller and cheaper, so can be more numerous (hence more frequent/available). - The car has dynamic routing, so instead of carrying you along a predetermined route, it can carry you anywhere you want to go and you don't need to wait for the "right" car.
thebradbain 7y ago
OP here: I love the bus! I take it all the time in Los Angeles, where I currently live without a car. I imagine this could be a fantastic complement — not replacement — to a bus, specifically for low ridership areas, last-mile connections, and lower-frequency routes, so busses could focus on what they’re best at: high frequency arterials with dedicated ROW carrying many passengers at once.
iamyohann23 7y ago
You're making the assumption that there's no maintenance costs involved with non self driving cars. The costs are a bit higher depending on the technology used but the cost is spread across 4x paying customers and a car thats able to service customers 24x7 which is about double the productivity of a non self driving car. Technology drives costs down, and once companies figure out best practices on self driving cars, many smaller companies will start copying the approach.

djannzjkzxn 7y ago

I’m wondering if you have ever ridden a bus, and also a shared Uber? The car gets you where you are going a lot faster than the bus, because you need to wait for at most 2 other stops instead of 17 or whatever, and you never need a transfer. Whether or not this argument convinces you, experiencing it yourself makes the difference obvious. It’s one of those things where you can actually do an experiment to find out the answer instead of just arguing about it. You could also try entering a destination into google maps and compare the estimated arrival time with bus vs Uber. The self-driving car will presumably be a similar experience to the Uber, but addresses the labor issues that are the main problem with that model.

marapuru 7y ago
Getting somewhere faster doesn't necessarily mean it's better. Recently I lost my car (I used to have a company car in front of my door, but switched jobs), now I am solely using public transport and my bicycle. It takes more time, doesn't really cost me anything more than having a car and because it takes more time I have more space to clear my mind. To let my mind wander for a while to process thoughts. I'm talking about distances that typically take 5 - 20 minutes by car, that are now maybe 15 - 40 minutes by public transport. See also: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mental-downtime/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mental-downtime/
- tomashubelbauer 7y ago
  While a longer route with public transport is certainly an opportunity to let your mind wander (as long as it is not that crowded and you can autopilot transfers), it is still a forced one. You might find that's not a problem for you, and I believe you, but that's a privileged position to be in and you're the odd one out. Most people, I believe, would rather be in control of when they let their mind wander and when they get to their family or friends faster. I am not arguing against public transit here, I wish for a carless city as much as the next person, but I'm not blind to the fact that public transit is far from perfect and almost certainly not the full answer to a carless city.
- animal531 7y ago
  If you're losing 20 minutes * 2 trips per day, that adds up to probably 7 days of lost time per year that you could have been doing something with.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - glutamate 7y ago
    Like, reading a book. Or listening to a podcast. Wait, I can do that on a bus too. Not every minute of your life has to be optimised.
    - msla 7y ago
      > Like, reading a book. Or listening to a podcast. Wait, I can do that on a bus too. Not on some of the buses I've ridden. We'd have to solve a dozen or so social issues before buses were reliably a good place to do relaxing activities.
    - feintruled 7y ago
      And of course some of the same people who complain of this lost time pay hundreds a year to join a gym to spend an hour running on the spot...
asjw 7y ago
> The car gets you where you are going a lot faster than the bus Of course, you pay more! It's even impacting the environment more, cities cannot plan for it and chose the path they should follow and ,in the end, why didn't you share your personal car with the people you know before Uber came along? Because you want a cab and a driver to - if it's necessary - share with people like you, not a shared means of transportation that's doing a service to a larger community
Juliate 7y ago
The Uber-like "pick me up where I am" is a pre-fit incentive that will be dropped later. I take buses regularly. Uber too. Taxis too. All in all, the de-humanizing/automation part that's getting traction from capital. It's not a strictly human/modern need that's being met, it's an addictive service (faster, exclusive) that's being sold and cost-optimized. You can be certain that the day Uber-automated-cars are the norm for transit, for cost/efficiency reasons, you will be kindly asked to join a specific pick-up point; and off-loaded at a specific location as well. Those locations will be computed & decided by the provider, not you (you know, bus). Unless you pay another premium (taxis).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- andrepd 7y ago
  >it's an addictive service (faster, exclusive) that's being sold and cost-optimized. I'm not convinced it's being cost-optimised... Uber is the most unprofitable company in existence! Unless cost-optimising means undercutting competitors with dirt cheap labour and by burning unholy amounts of cash, on the order of billions per quarter.
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  What you describe is a car service with an automated driver. Car services have existed for decades, and saving $20-25/hr on a driver isn't really that big of a net gain. The biggest innovation Uber offered is app-based dispatch. There is a lot of skepticism that automated vehicles will ever happen without massive infrastructure changes that remove human drivers from the road in large numbers. The liability issues are huge -- accidents will happen and people will die. In a case where fault must be determined between an autonomous vehicle and a human driver, human judges / juries are going to overwhemlingly side with the human. If anything, automated vehicles will require more costly regulation than human drivers do. Car services are a hard business to make money in because the job isn't very skilled, so there was a lot of regulation in place to ensure those services were priced in such a way that they continued to be reliable. Uber sidestepped a lot of that regulation through creative accounting and VC subsidization, but my guess is that when Uber and Lyft implode in a year or two, much of it will be reintroduced to fill the smoking hole they will leave in last-mile transit since they put the taxi companies out of business.
r_klancer 7y ago
I don't know if my experience is usual, but readily ride buses and trains that air so crowded I almost have to physically force my way into them, and I take Lyfts occasionally, but I never, ever opt for the shared ride. Maybe it's just me, but something about sharing a ride with one or two random people in the back seat of a sedan just seems unpleasantly awkward. Whereas a bus has enough people that you're a face in the crowd. (context: US, Boston/Cambridge/Somerville area)
wenc 7y ago
A halfway solution is something like Via, which is "bus-like" for frequent routes. https://ridewithvia.com/ https://ridewithvia.com/
camgunz 7y ago
During rush hour where I live (NYC), hundreds and hundreds of people ride the same bus I do. If each group of ~4 had their own car, everything would break down, and I shudder to think of the impact on the environment. The main problem w/ the model is people having to travel non-walkable/bikeable distances twice a day. Until we invent teleportation, not a lot is gonna change that basic math.
- CuriouslyC 7y ago
  New York is a special case and you can't use it to make general statements about transportation at all. Due to its density, not owning a car is pretty common in NYC, but unheard of elsewhere in the US. The vast majority of the population lives in low or medium density places where mass public transportation is a huge waste of time and effort.
  - camgunz 7y ago
    I think you're missing my point(s) a little. Most of the important tradeoffs between public transportation and individual automobiles are the same no matter the density, and it's all a function of how many people are "on the road" at a given time. You can cram 'em onto buses, or deploy a fleet of rideshares, but the core problem is moving billions of people non-walkable/bikeable distances twice a day. Grandparent's point was self-driving cars solves the labor problem, and thus the benefits of ridesharing totally outshine the benefits of mass transit. I'm saying I don't think a labor shortage is the main problem (no matter how much you think those drivers are making, it's not a lot). Rather, I think the problem is "every American worker gets a car and is transported ~16 miles twice a day" isn't scalable.
    - djannzjkzxn 7y ago
      To be clear, I think self-driving cars beat busses on quality of service. There simply isn’t a bus that exists that will take most people from where they are where they want to go. Dynamically generated routes beat fixed routes, because they get people to their destination. UberPool accomplishes the same thing, but uses more drivers per passenger than a bus, which leads to labor exploitation. Self-driving fixes that problem. And no, I don’t want to shut down the busses. I’m describing why so few people are using them, and why self-driving cars have a better chance of success. In fact, I think self-driving is a necessary ingredient for a public transit system that meets everyone’s needs in the US. I think buses are a natural park of a self-driving network - a dynamic dispatch system can use them on the most in-demand routes. Right now in America, the vast majority of people are driving solo to work. Even if self-driving vehicles merely double the capacity those vehicles handle, that seems enough to fix our transit problem.
fxtentacle 7y ago
Lucky me, I feel qualified to make a comparison here because I have traveled 20+ countries by train and bus, as well as taken 500+ Uber and Grab rides :) In many bigger cities in Europe, there are dedicated lanes reserved for public transport. You can grab an Uber and get stuck on the public lanes in a big traffic jam. Or you take the bus and arrive in half the time. Plus the bus is dirt cheap at a fixed-price $40 per month no matter how much you use it. I used to travel 12km by bus twice every working day and it took roughly 20 minutes per direction. Good luck getting an Uber ride for $1 per trip that'll average 36km/h = 22 miles/h through the rush-hour traffic in any big US city. Oh and don't get me started on the Berlin / Hamburg / Singapore MRT systems. Trains every 3 minutes with dedicated underground tunnels that usually arrive faster than it takes you to pay a parking ticket and get your car out of the 3rd parking deck. Plus, the Singapore MRT is so spotless clean and people are so careful and polite, I'd be willing to sit down with a blanket on the floor and have my dinner there. Eating in the MRT is forbidden, though. Also, I'm not sure if I had beginner Uber drivers untypically often or if they just have such a high turnover, but in 1 out of 4 rides the driver had problems finding me, despite having my GPS location and my street address. Having waited for 10 minutes only for the driver to then cancel and Uber support to scold me for hiding, I now usually walk to the bus stop and call the Uber from there. Much easier to find, even for beginners. But that kind of negates a big benefit that Uber was supposed to have, if they cannot pick me up where I am. And speaking of beginners, I have been in almost-accidents more often than I can remember, both with Uber and Grab. The driver is texting on his phone, or trying to readjust the app's map, not paying attention to the road, and then we have to stop tires screeching to avoid running over a cyclist. I have never ever had a bus driver as careless as about half of the app drivers. And then, there's the crazy aspect. When someone pukes in a shared bus, you can move to another seat. When your neighbor pukes in a shared Uber, you can only choose between accepting the smell or waiting 10+ minutes for the next Uber. Sadly, I speak from personal experience here.
- flush 7y ago
  Thank you for sharing the life experience you've had on your travels, but this is a service based in San Francisco. Discussion would be more productive if scope was narrowed to the topic of OP.
babesh 7y ago
It isn't a max of 2 stops. It's a max of 2 pickups and 2 stops. Also sometimes you end up taking detours for the pickups and stops, not to mention waiting for the people to show up. Happened to me. I think the bus got to my destination first.

nwhatt 7y ago

I wonder how long it will take the average Bay Area commuter to find an adversarial driving pattern for this.

TaylorAlexander 7y ago
Cruise has been operating a pretty dense fleet continuously in San Francisco for some time. Of course those vehicles have safety drivers, but they’re already facing SF drivers. Honestly I believe a system trained on so many millions of driving interactions would tend to act like an average good driver in SF, and so would ultimately blend in.

throwaway9d0291 7y ago

There are a few very big benefits compared to buses: - The car carries fewer people at any given time, so needs to stop in fewer places. - The cars are smaller and cheaper, so can be more numerous (hence more frequent/available). - The car has dynamic routing, so instead of carrying you along a predetermined route, it can carry you anywhere you want to go and you don't need to wait for the "right" car.

thebradbain 7y ago

OP here: I love the bus! I take it all the time in Los Angeles, where I currently live without a car. I imagine this could be a fantastic complement — not replacement — to a bus, specifically for low ridership areas, last-mile connections, and lower-frequency routes, so busses could focus on what they’re best at: high frequency arterials with dedicated ROW carrying many passengers at once.

iamyohann23 7y ago

You're making the assumption that there's no maintenance costs involved with non self driving cars. The costs are a bit higher depending on the technology used but the cost is spread across 4x paying customers and a car thats able to service customers 24x7 which is about double the productivity of a non self driving car. Technology drives costs down, and once companies figure out best practices on self driving cars, many smaller companies will start copying the approach.