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I wish they would target mass transit not rideshare cars. A bus with this technology could immediately run a lot more frequent with shorter buses, and because

I wish they would target mass transit not rideshare cars. A bus with this technology could immediately run a lot more frequent with shorter buses, and because the route is fixed they don't have to verify the entire city, only the roads the bus will travel on. Fix route buses running at high frequency is the key to getting people to ride mass transit, but it isn't affordable because drivers are so expensive if you can even find them to hire.

lostdog 1y ago
For a self-driving company, replacing a lot of drivers servicing some passengers is much better financially than replacing a few drivers servicing many passengers. Pencil it out yourself and you'll see that doing robotaxis is much better than doing robobuses. Plus, have any cities suggested that they would contract out their business driving to an automous company? Has anyone asked the unions to see what they might do about it? Autonomous buses will come, but only after the approach has fully taken over the taxi market first.
- bluGill 1y ago
  For the company maybe, but for everyone else it is worse. Taxis are worse for the environment than cars because you have to count all the driving around empty picking people up (demand is rarely even in all directions). Rideshare is only of limited use outside fixed routes as people have places to be an detouring to pick up someone else makes them mad.
MostlyStable 1y ago
Without major cultural shifts, you still need someone on the bus to prevent them from becoming moving dumpsters. The driving itself would be much easier, as you point out. That's not the only thing that a driver does.
- 999900000999 1y ago
  You could have a guy making minimum wage sit in the back and tell people not to act stupid. That would be much cheaper than a union bus driver who can clear 100k. Safer too since bus drivers often go tons of overtime which isn't great for being alert.
  - rangestransform 1y ago
    Very optimistic for you to believe that politically entrenched unions in major US cities will allow this
    - triceratops 1y ago
      Buyouts for the affected bus drivers.
      - toomuchtodo 1y ago
        For historical reference, this is how longshoremen/dockworkers were compensated when shipping containers increased efficiency. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30856522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30856522 (citations)
        LaffertyDev 1y ago
        That was a very fun sub thread to read, both for the on-topic and off-topic discussion. Thanks for sharing.
  - Karrot_Kream 1y ago
    In the Bay a police officer staffed on a rapid bus line in 2022 needed ~ $250k benefits included. It won't be that cheap
    - 999900000999 1y ago
      In LA you have contracted security guards who often just walk around the metro without the same authority of an actual LEO. That's typically enough to stop most weird behavior like throwing trash on the ground.
- lisbbb 1y ago
  The "driver" could become more armed security and janitor.
quickthrowman 1y ago
Bus drivers already have to assist handicapped passengers that are getting on and off the bus (at least for my metro area bus service), so someone will need to be in there anyways.
- bluGill 1y ago
  A better bus and stop design eliminates more of that. You can have call ahead for help if you need to. A busy bus route normal people will be glad to help the disabled as well so long as what they need to do isn't hard and doesn't take much time (which it shouldn't - see better design...). For the rest paratransit should take them because despite the higher costs disabled people if they need to much help are taking time from everyone else who wants to get someplace not wait while someone is slowly loaded onto the bus.
  - asdff 1y ago
    The bus driver is often tying down the wheelchair with dedicated straps.
idiotsecant 1y ago
People in cities don't like to ride with strangers if they can help it, generally. This isn't absolute - if density gets high enough and people get used to it, they will absolutely do it, but if they have the choice to avoid it they generally will. No amount of self-driving busses fixes that.
- bluGill 1y ago
  The only people who say that are people who are justifying their not riding the bus - which is probably not usable for them anyway. Too many people do ride the bus all over the world (even in the US) to think that is really true. Statisticians and Psychologists have long known people lie about their reasons for doing something.
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    idiotsecant wrote "if they can help it". Which means people take into account things like travel time, congestion, safety risks, general comfort, etc. >The only people who say that are people who are justifying their not riding the bus Is this supposed to be a tautology? Obviously people who justify it are people justifying it. I would bet real money that the vast majority of women will choose a private vehicle over a bus if they were the same price.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - bluGill 1y ago
      The important part is that there is no way to know if women really will choose a private vehicle over the bus. We have examples all over the world of women who could drive if they wanted to (they could get a license and afford a car), but they don't. Is this a small minority or not we really cannot say. Given same price is false - a car is always more expensive, but many of the costs of a car are fixed, gas itself is cheap while you still have to make the car payment even if you ride the bus and let the car sit - so it seems like a car could be cheaper. I believe that given transit is a reasonable option for most trips (not just getting to work) most women will decide over 5 years that transit is safe and will start using it. However there is no real way to know except to try it meaning your bet is not really possible - there are too many variables allowing me to say you didn't do enough.
majormajor 1y ago
Are driver costs really the primary thing stopping increased bus route service? Or is it the chicken-and-egg of "ridership isn't high enough to demand more frequent service" + the distraction of shinier rail projects? Bus drivers would be cheaper than rail construction, I think you need to sell "more busses" politically first.
- Karrot_Kream 1y ago
  > Are driver costs really the primary thing stopping increased bus route service? On rail I'm not as sure but on bus yes. Drivers are the largest cost associated with a bus line. There's also a whole set of downstream costs like bathroom breaks which requires that routes are aligned with bathroom stops and that bathrooms are kept in good working order. Breaks also decrease bus frequency (humans need breaks!) and running more buses is often limited by the number of drivers you can hire. However bus drivers often play a dual role in US transit of discouraging anti-social behavior so it's unclear to me if you could even get rid of the bus driver and the associated inefficiencies or you'd just need to replace them with a police officer and deal with the exact same problems. Many bus drivers are unhappy having to play this role, so that's also a factor.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    On rail the largest costs are building and maintaining the rail until you get to very high frequency. For most rail in the US the largest factor in maintenance is weather and so you could run a lot more trains without changing the costs much. You do need to buy more trains, and they will need to be cleaned, but it wouldn't be hard to get enough to people on board to pay those incremental costs. (in the US the bottleneck is often an expensive tunnel that is shared between several not busy lines, each line could itself handle many more trains all day than they have at the peak without changing maintenance costs - but the tunnel is full and it costs too much to build a new one - this is why so many in transit are focusing on construction costs - if we can build a short tunnel we unlock a lot of better transit)
    - reaperducer 1y ago
Karrot_Kream 1y ago
On BART safety concerns and union contracts restrict automation. This fun article from 2017 [1] could have been written today but shows why it's so hard for public infrastructure to be effective. Every actor is incentivized to get something out of public infrastructure. In the current AI mood I suspect opposition to automation by unions would be even stronger. The Abundance movement has put a good moniker to this concept: Everything Bagel Liberalism. [1]: https://sf.streetsblog.org/2017/03/06/lets-talk-seriously-about-driverless-trains https://sf.streetsblog.org/2017/03/06/lets-talk-seriously-ab...

lostdog 1y ago

For a self-driving company, replacing a lot of drivers servicing some passengers is much better financially than replacing a few drivers servicing many passengers. Pencil it out yourself and you'll see that doing robotaxis is much better than doing robobuses. Plus, have any cities suggested that they would contract out their business driving to an automous company? Has anyone asked the unions to see what they might do about it? Autonomous buses will come, but only after the approach has fully taken over the taxi market first.

bluGill 1y ago
For the company maybe, but for everyone else it is worse. Taxis are worse for the environment than cars because you have to count all the driving around empty picking people up (demand is rarely even in all directions). Rideshare is only of limited use outside fixed routes as people have places to be an detouring to pick up someone else makes them mad.

MostlyStable 1y ago

Without major cultural shifts, you still need someone on the bus to prevent them from becoming moving dumpsters. The driving itself would be much easier, as you point out. That's not the only thing that a driver does.

999900000999 1y ago
You could have a guy making minimum wage sit in the back and tell people not to act stupid. That would be much cheaper than a union bus driver who can clear 100k. Safer too since bus drivers often go tons of overtime which isn't great for being alert.
- rangestransform 1y ago
  Very optimistic for you to believe that politically entrenched unions in major US cities will allow this
  - triceratops 1y ago
    Buyouts for the affected bus drivers.
    - toomuchtodo 1y ago
      For historical reference, this is how longshoremen/dockworkers were compensated when shipping containers increased efficiency. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30856522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30856522 (citations)
      - LaffertyDev 1y ago
        That was a very fun sub thread to read, both for the on-topic and off-topic discussion. Thanks for sharing.
- Karrot_Kream 1y ago
  In the Bay a police officer staffed on a rapid bus line in 2022 needed ~ $250k benefits included. It won't be that cheap
  - 999900000999 1y ago
    In LA you have contracted security guards who often just walk around the metro without the same authority of an actual LEO. That's typically enough to stop most weird behavior like throwing trash on the ground.
lisbbb 1y ago
The "driver" could become more armed security and janitor.

quickthrowman 1y ago

Bus drivers already have to assist handicapped passengers that are getting on and off the bus (at least for my metro area bus service), so someone will need to be in there anyways.

bluGill 1y ago
A better bus and stop design eliminates more of that. You can have call ahead for help if you need to. A busy bus route normal people will be glad to help the disabled as well so long as what they need to do isn't hard and doesn't take much time (which it shouldn't - see better design...). For the rest paratransit should take them because despite the higher costs disabled people if they need to much help are taking time from everyone else who wants to get someplace not wait while someone is slowly loaded onto the bus.
- asdff 1y ago
  The bus driver is often tying down the wheelchair with dedicated straps.

idiotsecant 1y ago

People in cities don't like to ride with strangers if they can help it, generally. This isn't absolute - if density gets high enough and people get used to it, they will absolutely do it, but if they have the choice to avoid it they generally will. No amount of self-driving busses fixes that.

bluGill 1y ago
The only people who say that are people who are justifying their not riding the bus - which is probably not usable for them anyway. Too many people do ride the bus all over the world (even in the US) to think that is really true. Statisticians and Psychologists have long known people lie about their reasons for doing something.
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  idiotsecant wrote "if they can help it". Which means people take into account things like travel time, congestion, safety risks, general comfort, etc. >The only people who say that are people who are justifying their not riding the bus Is this supposed to be a tautology? Obviously people who justify it are people justifying it. I would bet real money that the vast majority of women will choose a private vehicle over a bus if they were the same price.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - bluGill 1y ago
    The important part is that there is no way to know if women really will choose a private vehicle over the bus. We have examples all over the world of women who could drive if they wanted to (they could get a license and afford a car), but they don't. Is this a small minority or not we really cannot say. Given same price is false - a car is always more expensive, but many of the costs of a car are fixed, gas itself is cheap while you still have to make the car payment even if you ride the bus and let the car sit - so it seems like a car could be cheaper. I believe that given transit is a reasonable option for most trips (not just getting to work) most women will decide over 5 years that transit is safe and will start using it. However there is no real way to know except to try it meaning your bet is not really possible - there are too many variables allowing me to say you didn't do enough.

majormajor 1y ago

Are driver costs really the primary thing stopping increased bus route service? Or is it the chicken-and-egg of "ridership isn't high enough to demand more frequent service" + the distraction of shinier rail projects? Bus drivers would be cheaper than rail construction, I think you need to sell "more busses" politically first.

Karrot_Kream 1y ago
> Are driver costs really the primary thing stopping increased bus route service? On rail I'm not as sure but on bus yes. Drivers are the largest cost associated with a bus line. There's also a whole set of downstream costs like bathroom breaks which requires that routes are aligned with bathroom stops and that bathrooms are kept in good working order. Breaks also decrease bus frequency (humans need breaks!) and running more buses is often limited by the number of drivers you can hire. However bus drivers often play a dual role in US transit of discouraging anti-social behavior so it's unclear to me if you could even get rid of the bus driver and the associated inefficiencies or you'd just need to replace them with a police officer and deal with the exact same problems. Many bus drivers are unhappy having to play this role, so that's also a factor.
- bluGill 1y ago
  On rail the largest costs are building and maintaining the rail until you get to very high frequency. For most rail in the US the largest factor in maintenance is weather and so you could run a lot more trains without changing the costs much. You do need to buy more trains, and they will need to be cleaned, but it wouldn't be hard to get enough to people on board to pay those incremental costs. (in the US the bottleneck is often an expensive tunnel that is shared between several not busy lines, each line could itself handle many more trains all day than they have at the peak without changing maintenance costs - but the tunnel is full and it costs too much to build a new one - this is why so many in transit are focusing on construction costs - if we can build a short tunnel we unlock a lot of better transit)
  - reaperducer 1y ago

Karrot_Kream 1y ago

On BART safety concerns and union contracts restrict automation. This fun article from 2017 [1] could have been written today but shows why it's so hard for public infrastructure to be effective. Every actor is incentivized to get something out of public infrastructure. In the current AI mood I suspect opposition to automation by unions would be even stronger. The Abundance movement has put a good moniker to this concept: Everything Bagel Liberalism. [1]: https://sf.streetsblog.org/2017/03/06/lets-talk-seriously-about-driverless-trains https://sf.streetsblog.org/2017/03/06/lets-talk-seriously-ab...