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No you don’t. AVs with 2-4 riders provide excellent passenger density and provide way higher quality service than traditional mass transit. Trip times are typ

No you don’t. AVs with 2-4 riders provide excellent passenger density and provide way higher quality service than traditional mass transit. Trip times are typically less than half of even a good mass transit system, and it’s a far more relaxed environment. The biggest problem with mass transit is that it is slow, and while you can improve a system to make it faster, there are ultimate necessary limits because the passenger has to walk to a stop, wait for a vehicle, and then wait while the vehicle stops and passengers get on and off, and then walk to their destination. You cannot fix this, it’s inherent to the medium.

BenFranklin100 2y ago
I seem to recall a startup or two working on AV ‘micro-buses’. That is, AV buses that held 4-8 passengers and that would have broader route patterns than traditional buses. Anything ever happen to those? I can see how those could complement traditional mass transit very well.
- cameldrv 2y ago
  There are a few. Zoox comes to mind in that their vehicle is somewhat bus-like in that it has bus type doors, and somewhat bus like seating and interior (plastic/vinyl, easy to clean), but it only holds 4 passengers. Uber and Lyft already have a similar (with a driver) service that they've rejiggered a few times. I used it a fair bit pre-covid to commute. The price wasn't much more than driving myself, and the speed was good -- usually it was only about 5 minutes slower on a 30-40 minute drive, and I could use the time to catch up on email, read, etc. The same ride on transit would have been about 1.5 hours, or 1 hour if I took a bike on the train instead of using busses or walking for part of the trip. Transit was also a bunch of broken up blocks of time either standing waiting, or sitting on a train or getting on and off/in/out of a station. With the shared ride vehicle, it was just wait a few minutes for pickup and then I had a solid block of time in a fairly comfortable environment. I really think that this is the future of transit. If you have enough usage, you could probably push these vehicles up to 8-10 people and still get reasonable travel times (way better than transit) at transit-competitive costs. People who wanted better speed and more privacy could order smaller vehicles for a higher price. If these were popular it would massively reduce congestion because people would actually want to take them instead of driving themselves.
  - BenFranklin100 2y ago
    In the US, with its suburbs and spread out cities, AV cars, microbuses and the lot definitely have a role to play. There’s no way around that. Where was your experience for mass transit? The US? I live in Boston, which has one of the best mass transit systems in the US, but still it sucks as a general means to get around, or even to and from work for many people. But the US has extraordinarily poor mass transit overall. Budapest, Paris, Tokyo, Vienna, etc… have efficient, multi-layered, redundant mass transit that serves the population well as a general means to get around. It’s faster than the auto frequently even in non rush hour times. I don’t see (good) mass transit and AVs at odds with one another, but rather complimentary. Every auto off the road makes the remaining auto transit more efficient. Less autos on the road also frees up roads for bikes and pedestrian use, a big plus in denser urban environments in need of more green and public space.
    - cameldrv 2y ago
      This was in the Bay Area, which has OK but not great transit. I used to live in Berlin though that has great transit, which I rode a lot, and it's still much slower than driving or taking a Taxi. Ultimately you just cannot get around the physics of it. If you have a 50 person vehicle, the average person is going to need to wait for 50 people to get on or off during their ride. In order to do that, they're going to have to make a bunch of stops. To do that, the vehicle has to slow down and speed up at a reasonable acceleration rate, so the average speed is necessarily much slower than the maximum speed. With fixed routes, you also cannot get around having to walk to and from the station/stop, and you can't get around having to wait at least some time for the vehicle to arrive. For most trips you also can't avoid having to do a transfer with more walking/waiting. The solution is less passengers per vehicle so there's less stopping, and dynamic routes so that there's less walking and less waiting. You can't really do door to door dynamic routes with lots of passengers, because you'd be going too far out of your way and it would be slow. This wasn't possible before because you had to pay a driver, but if a driver is low cost, the game is completely different.

BenFranklin100 2y ago

I seem to recall a startup or two working on AV ‘micro-buses’. That is, AV buses that held 4-8 passengers and that would have broader route patterns than traditional buses. Anything ever happen to those? I can see how those could complement traditional mass transit very well.

cameldrv 2y ago
There are a few. Zoox comes to mind in that their vehicle is somewhat bus-like in that it has bus type doors, and somewhat bus like seating and interior (plastic/vinyl, easy to clean), but it only holds 4 passengers. Uber and Lyft already have a similar (with a driver) service that they've rejiggered a few times. I used it a fair bit pre-covid to commute. The price wasn't much more than driving myself, and the speed was good -- usually it was only about 5 minutes slower on a 30-40 minute drive, and I could use the time to catch up on email, read, etc. The same ride on transit would have been about 1.5 hours, or 1 hour if I took a bike on the train instead of using busses or walking for part of the trip. Transit was also a bunch of broken up blocks of time either standing waiting, or sitting on a train or getting on and off/in/out of a station. With the shared ride vehicle, it was just wait a few minutes for pickup and then I had a solid block of time in a fairly comfortable environment. I really think that this is the future of transit. If you have enough usage, you could probably push these vehicles up to 8-10 people and still get reasonable travel times (way better than transit) at transit-competitive costs. People who wanted better speed and more privacy could order smaller vehicles for a higher price. If these were popular it would massively reduce congestion because people would actually want to take them instead of driving themselves.
- BenFranklin100 2y ago
  In the US, with its suburbs and spread out cities, AV cars, microbuses and the lot definitely have a role to play. There’s no way around that. Where was your experience for mass transit? The US? I live in Boston, which has one of the best mass transit systems in the US, but still it sucks as a general means to get around, or even to and from work for many people. But the US has extraordinarily poor mass transit overall. Budapest, Paris, Tokyo, Vienna, etc… have efficient, multi-layered, redundant mass transit that serves the population well as a general means to get around. It’s faster than the auto frequently even in non rush hour times. I don’t see (good) mass transit and AVs at odds with one another, but rather complimentary. Every auto off the road makes the remaining auto transit more efficient. Less autos on the road also frees up roads for bikes and pedestrian use, a big plus in denser urban environments in need of more green and public space.
  - cameldrv 2y ago
    This was in the Bay Area, which has OK but not great transit. I used to live in Berlin though that has great transit, which I rode a lot, and it's still much slower than driving or taking a Taxi. Ultimately you just cannot get around the physics of it. If you have a 50 person vehicle, the average person is going to need to wait for 50 people to get on or off during their ride. In order to do that, they're going to have to make a bunch of stops. To do that, the vehicle has to slow down and speed up at a reasonable acceleration rate, so the average speed is necessarily much slower than the maximum speed. With fixed routes, you also cannot get around having to walk to and from the station/stop, and you can't get around having to wait at least some time for the vehicle to arrive. For most trips you also can't avoid having to do a transfer with more walking/waiting. The solution is less passengers per vehicle so there's less stopping, and dynamic routes so that there's less walking and less waiting. You can't really do door to door dynamic routes with lots of passengers, because you'd be going too far out of your way and it would be slow. This wasn't possible before because you had to pay a driver, but if a driver is low cost, the game is completely different.