Autonomous Driving in Five New Cities

Self-driving jitneys will be able to extend public transit into the cul-de-sac subdivisions that are impervious to useful bus service. Let little 8 seat shuttles bring people out to the main line for trains or full-size busses to carry away. It is terribly inefficient to run a 50 person bus with 3 people in it, one of whom is a paid driver. See https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/autonomous-driverless...

Same for small towns - they just don't have the population or the density to run large busses with drivers on fixed routes at a reasonable frequency. I've seen smaller city busses with routes that only run every 90 minutes. But smaller self-driving vehicles can collect a few people and run them around. See https://www.chandleraz.gov/residents/transportation/transit/... or https://ridewithvia.com/news/waymo-and-via-announce-strategi...

Or try this - Waymo giving a discount for pickups at station. I used to use the Toronto subway this way - take the subway as close as I could get, and then take a taxi the last couple of kilometres. https://waymo.com/blog/2024/10/clean-rides-clear-benefits-wa...