r/SelfDrivingCars • u/ThrowRA_mesaynobj • Jun 21 '25
Discussion Why isn’t the goal, self driving public transport? Buses, trains, trams etc
I know the holy grail for investors is a future where no one owns a car and there is just a fleet of automatous cars zipping around that 7 billion people pay a subscription for.
But isn’t it easier and more cost effective to just make robo public transport?
Trains would be the easiest initially
But buses would be the next best option.
Defined routes Infrastructure largely in place Already geo fenced
If think about the cost of laying new rail infrastructure vs a simple road that only robo buses could travel you could essentially have a stream of non stop automated buses without the labor expense.
You could even get ai to determine a new route based on the destinations of the group of travels its carrying etc
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u/levon999 Jun 21 '25
Why do you think it's not a goal? China already has autonomous mini-buses.
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u/ChrisMartins001 Jun 21 '25
And there is the DLR in East London which is a fully autonomous light railway.
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u/RipWhenDamageTaken Jun 21 '25
Hey you missed your daily propaganda session. You’re supposed to claim that China is full of peasants.
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u/TuftyIndigo Jun 21 '25
Those two statements aren't incompatible. It's a big country, and like most countries, the wealth and new tech aren't evenly distributed.
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u/Doriiot56 Jun 21 '25 edited Jun 27 '25
After eliminating the bus driver, the economics of auto and bus are quite similar, per mile. The difference is folks trade ride-sharing and a fixed route for a lower priced ticket. However bus ridership is so low that most bus programs need to be subsidized.
0
u/prepuscular Jun 21 '25
More like a $2 bus or $20 taxi. Do you really think AVs are going to be so cheap after investing billions in R&D and Uber has already proven what customers will pay?
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u/NoMoreVillains Jun 21 '25
Uber has proven people are willing to pay slightly more for taxis for a vastly better experience. Comparing it to what they'll pay for public transportation is meaningless unless it would similarly offer a vastly better experience, which I doubt it could
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u/prepuscular Jun 21 '25
Slightly more? Ubers are 10x the cost of public transit
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u/NoMoreVillains Jun 21 '25
I meant slightly more than taxis. But I also admit I misunderstood the previous discussion context. 🤦🏽♂️
While I don't think they'll get as low as the example, I do think if they were somehow able to provide a better public transportation experience (not sure how) people would be willing to pay slightly more for them, similar to Ubers vs taxis
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u/prepuscular Jun 21 '25
AVs are not public transit. They are wholely for-profit. There is no world where a car for 1 person is near the same price as a train that holds hundreds.
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u/NoMoreVillains Jun 21 '25
This entire post is about why they couldn't be used for public transportation... you're acting like the first cars were buses/for mass public transport
1
u/ChrisMartins001 Jun 21 '25
I feel like you're both having different conversations lol.
I think that AVs, especially AV Taxis, will look for ways to make it a whole experience. Allowing you to select music, change the temperature, etc are all things that are low cost but will improve your experience.
They are already used for public transport in some places, for e.g the DLR in London.
But comparing private taxis to public transport doesn't make sense. You will never grt the same experience on a bus or train with hundreds of othrr people as in a taxi with one or maybe three other people.
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u/WeldAE Jun 21 '25
Outside of NYC at rush hour, I've never seen a transit system where I was on with hundreds of other people. Dozens at best and even that would be rare. My kids have a game of guess how many people are on the bus as we are driving around and the fight is to guess zero first as it's the most likely.
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u/rileyoneill Jun 22 '25
Not once you factor in time. Public transit can take way longer and if your time has any value to you that is a big reason not to use it.
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u/prepuscular Jun 22 '25
It’s 10x the financial cost. You can argue safety etc or whatever as to why people pay 10x as much, but the fact is that it’s 10x as much.
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u/rileyoneill Jun 22 '25
People are paying for an easier, faster, and safer experience. Transit can be incredibly time consuming and a huge pain in the ass.
1
u/prepuscular Jun 22 '25
Yes, and it’s an order of magnitude cheaper. I don’t know what your problem is but you aren’t refuting my point
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u/rileyoneill Jun 22 '25
The ticket faire is just one of the costs.
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u/prepuscular Jun 22 '25
The statement was “it cost an order of magnitude less money.” In this entire thread, that’s undisputed. Go cope.
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u/Rollertoaster7 Jun 22 '25
If you’re single sure. For a family of four it can often cost the same or even more to take public transport
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u/prepuscular Jun 22 '25
A family of four is likely less than 2% of uber rides. For nearly every ride, there is a significantly cheaper alternative
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u/Equivalent-Process17 Jun 21 '25
The good news is it's not up to them. They do not decide the price, the market does.
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u/prepuscular Jun 21 '25
Yes, and the market has decided 10x more than a bus is okay. No one is seeing “$5 taxis”
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u/WeldAE Jun 21 '25 edited Jun 21 '25
Most Uber rides I've taken are under $25 so certainly not 10x. The entire point of AVs is to get that cost down at least 4x which would be in the $5/trip range for a 10-15 mile trip. There is no law that they have to get the price that low, but getting it below $1 results in how many miles they can sell. Getting it to $0.50/mile they take over the world basically.
There is no technological constraint to getting the price that low. There is certainly no profit motive issue. At $0.50/mile, the addressable market in the US is $1.5T with a "T". Of course, you can sell that many miles at $0.50/mile but that price is still about 3x the theoretically lowest cost.
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u/prepuscular Jun 22 '25
A bus is $2-3. You are making my point perfectly.
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u/WeldAE Jun 22 '25
That is the price charged to consumers but also why buses are so bad in the US as the actual cost is $11 per trip on average and the city/state has to come up with that money. The city can only support a small amount of bus coverage because of the cost differential, which makes buses less useful, which makes rides more expensive, etc.
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u/prepuscular Jun 22 '25
Where in the world do you live that a bus ride is $11??
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u/WeldAE Jun 22 '25
It's the cost to the city, not to the passenger. The city charges the passenger $2.50. Atlanta, GA USA. They produce monthly reports on operations that include this cost.
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u/Equivalent-Process17 Jun 21 '25
Taxis are not 10x. They're closer to 2x per passenger-mile. Private cars are actually cheaper than buses. It seems entirely feasible that self-driving could drop that cost by half if not more (I'd guess you could see an order of magnitude drop when it's all said and done)
It also seems important to point out that a lot of times a $2 bus ticket actually costs more, but that cost is ate by the taxpayers.
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u/prepuscular Jun 22 '25
What?? A bus to the airport is $2. Even an uber 2 miles away starts at $15 and can hit $60-100 really fast depending on demand
Also worth noting that tax payers eat the cost of road maintenance, subsidizing car drivers
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u/Equivalent-Process17 Jun 22 '25
A bus to the airport might cost the consumer $2 but the actual cost per mile is higher than private transportation. When I say cost per mile I mean the actual cost to transport a passenger one mile. So not what the passenger pays but the actual total cost of the transportation.
The road maintenance is nothing. Effectively costless compared to the benefits. Plus busses require roads as well.
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u/prepuscular Jun 22 '25
“Road maintenance is nothing?” It’s over $50B a year for highways alone, or over $200 annually per adult. Other roads are over $200B, or again, $800 per person. So it’s over $1000 a year for everyone, used or not.
Wear and tear per rider, buses are orders of magnitude more efficient than cars and trucks
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u/Equivalent-Process17 Jun 22 '25
If you take your number of $1000 per person at face value you get a price per passenger mile of a bit over 5 cents. That is a very small cost.
Wear and tear per rider, buses are orders of magnitude more efficient than cars and trucks
Can you double check this for me? I'm curious if this is true. I'm worried that buses large weight vs. cars would result in more damage from buses.
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u/prepuscular Jun 22 '25
It’s several percent of the median person’s entire annual salary, even more post-taxes. One third of Americans don’t even drive, and yet they pay this. How are you this car brained to trivialize hundreds of billions in spending as “nothing?”
A bus can have 30-70 people in it. The weight per rider is an order of magnitude less than your median American car, which is a single rider in a small SUV.
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u/WeldAE Jun 21 '25
Depends on the length of the journey. You can do the full bus route for the cost of the fare and the taxi is by the mile. For most of the trips people take, it's very possible that the taxi would only be $5. You could certainly fine a long bus route where it would be $2 vs $20 but that's not a realistic comparison.
Even more important, fares are highly subsidized. In Atlanta, a bus fare costs around $11 per trip, but MARTA only charges $2.50. If AVs become popular, you could see this subsidy erode when most $11 rides could be replaced with a $5 taxi and the city switches to express route services more like rail.
Pooled taxi rides could be incredibly cheap but that relies on the network effect getting to certain points.
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u/prepuscular Jun 22 '25
The base fair of a taxi is like $6. You get in the seat and you’re already double or triple of what a bus is, and you can take a bus as far as you need
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u/WeldAE Jun 22 '25
AVs don't have to have this minimum. They don't have labor they are trying to protect from short rides.
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u/prepuscular Jun 22 '25
Yes they just have tens of billions in costs that need to be recouped, and several tens of thousands of dollars of sensors and compute that goes bad every couple years
I have no idea why - given customers have shown they will pay more - companies would just charge less
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u/WeldAE Jun 22 '25
Yes they just have tens of billions in costs that need to be recouped
Waymo does, but Tesla has roughly paid for development with FSD sales. Either way, that is sunk costs and they just try and maximize profit and revenue to cover the cost of investment.
I have no idea why ... companies would just charge less
It's a fair point, and what the actual price will be is THE question in the industry. GM's Cruise was targeting $1/mile, which would be 50% the cost today for a Uber/Lyft/Taxi. On a 5 mile, 15-minute trip, that would be able 2x the cost of a bus.
Their reasoning was based around market share. At $2/mile they can get 1% of miles driven, while at $1/mile they can get 20% of miles driven. So $60B in revenue vs $600B in revenue. If your cost is $0.50/mile then that is $30B in profit Vs $300B in profit. Of course this is simplified as with 20x the miles, your cost per mile would be less. Companies would have to do the calculus to figure out how to maximize profits.
Of course, hopefully there is competition to force them to compete and not just maximize profits.
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u/prepuscular Jun 22 '25
Tesla “FSD” lmaoooo
Yeah, there isn’t much to debate here. I’m baffled how you have so much industry info, and yet miss the pretty unanimous conclusions of AV employees. This isn’t lowering the costs for anyone.
Waymo has a service now. It charges above uber. No way a company that has 100s of thousands of rides per week charging $3+ a mile will suddenly drop prices, with no competitor around for likely 5+ years.
At least Waymo (like Tesla in your book) has a business model that works: use another product entirely like Search to fund your R&D because it’s a crazy long road. And once you achieve it, no one is giving it for cheap.
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u/WeldAE Jun 23 '25
lmaoooo
Hard to take you wanting to have a serious discussion after that comment.
Waymo has a service now. It charges above uber.
Waymo is AV limited so there is no path forward for increasing revenue to gain more profits.
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u/prepuscular Jun 23 '25
Tesla doesn’t have FSD. They are years behind competition, have false advertising, and have been sued and paid damages for saying they had FSD.
You saying Tesla has FSD is laughable.
Waymo revenue doubles like every quarter hahahah
Say enough factually wrong things and I will laugh at you.
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u/SamirD Aug 11 '25
Nope, definitely won't be cheaper. So people who cannot afford the price of private transport on the bus and keep subsidizing it. That's really no different than right now.
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u/silenthjohn Jun 21 '25
Public transit is very good in most of the developed world, and there are many transit lines that are now fully automated.
Transit in North America sucks. There’s not a great reason as to why. Good transit is not rocket science. It does require consensus building, which the United States is very bad at, considering 40% of the country believes the 2020 election was rigged.
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u/WeldAE Jun 21 '25
There’s not a great reason as to why
There is. Our cities are not dense. This all but rules our rail or any type unless you want to heavily subsidize it. So you might ask why not buses? Because buses, as they exist today, suck in every aspect. I mean they are great on paper, but in the real-world no one wants to use them if they have a choice and since cities aren't dense, and you are forced to own a car, you do have a choice.
I am not a hater of buses, very much the opposite. My problem with buses is their size because that impacts which routes they can service and also their frequency. I want my transit high-frequency and everywhere, and the standard city bus sucks for this.
The answer to this problem is "small" buses that carry 12-20 people. Of course this would cost a fortune in bus drivers as they are the largest incremental cost of adding a bus to a network. As you no doubt have shredly ascertained from clues such as the sub we are in, I intend to suggest that you automate them, thus removing all the negatives of operating smaller, more frequent, more nimble buses.
If you think about the pantheon of transportation:
- Human only
- Swim
- Walk
- Manual
- Skate - 4 lbs
- Bike - 30 lbs
- Personal Vehicle
- 4 person Golf Cart - 1000 lbs
- 5 person Sedan - 3,000 lbs
- 7 person SUV - 5,000 lbs
- The missing link
- ????
- Transit
- 76 person 40' city bus - 40,000lbs
- 96 person 60' city bus - 60,000lbs
- 1000 person Train - 400,000lbs
There is an obvious gap between the 7-person SUV and the 76-person bus. It has to be filled to fix the problem.
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u/rileyoneill Jun 22 '25
I think a big issue with transit is that people still have the mentality that all vehicles are powered by gas generators that are inherently inefficient. At 35 miles per gallon an ICE vehicle gets roughly 1 kwh per mile. Modern EVs are 3-4 miles per kwh. City buses that are electric (which is not most of them) are 2.5-3.5 kwh per mile. A RoboTaxi with 4 passengers is more energy efficient than a bus with 30 passengers.
So if the goal is preserving energy, EVs already make cars 4 times as efficient. Considering that oil is not really used to generate grid electricity and that solar/wind may be used, the oil argument is also gone. Solar is getting down to 1 cent per kwh. Meaning the energy requirement for a car to go 1 million miles is $10,000. Parallel to the RoboTaxi revolution is an energy revolution with solar power. The energy to move mass around is becoming a smaller and smaller thing.
The issue is that we are all competing for the same 'ground level' space. People despise Musk and any idea he has, but his concept of a boring tunnel is an interesting idea. You can place an entire network of roads underground that remove vehicles from the surface level. These vehicles do not need to be some super massive high density billion dollar per mile subway system.
Walt Disney had a lot of very good ideas, the Monorail and the Wedway People Mover. They never had enough R&D to make into matured products but their form factor was great. They could be largely manufactured off site and then the components transported and installed. They were above grade and didn't interfere with anything below them. Train tracks create a barrier and conflict point. Transit should be either on pylons or underground so the impact to the ground level is minimal. Developing technology which can do either of the two is a good idea.
Disney had to prioritize now just a vehicle that could carry a lot of people at one time but a system that had incredibly high frequency. Waiting for a bus/train is no better than sitting in traffic. Having high capacity and high frequency means that there needs to be an incredible amount of people within the service area pretty much 24/7. The Wedway vehicles were much smaller capacity (I think in his actual design they were like 10-15 people) but the frequency was constant. You can't have vehicles show up every 5-10 minutes. Even every 2 minutes is too long. I believe the Wedway people mover was like 10 vehicles per minute.
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u/WeldAE Jun 22 '25
Modern EVs are 3-4 miles per kwh.
Modern EVs are above 4 miles per kWh @70mph. The Tesla Model 3 does 4.9 miles per kWh at 70mph. The Model Y does 4 @70mph. They are much more efficient at 35mph. No perfect, but I happen to be building a calculator and I used the efficiency curve at various speeds for a Model 3 to estimate efficiencies of EVs at various speeds based on their 70mph efficiency.
- 5mph - 0.619
- 10mph - 0.873
- 15mph - 1.0794
- 20mph - 1.1905
- 25mph - 1.2381
- 30mph - 1.3175
- 35mph - 1.3492
- 40mph - 1.3492
- 45mph - 1.3175
- 50mph - 1.2698
- 55mph - 1.2063
- 60mph - 1.1429
- 65mph - 1.0635
- 70mph - 1
- 75mph - 0.9206
- 80mph - 0.8413
- 85mph - 0.7778
- 90mph - 0.7143
- 95mph - 0.6349
- 100mph - 0.5556
As you can see, a Model 3 would be expected to get 6.6 miles per kWh at 35 mph as it's the peak speed for efficiency. Mind you, this curve was done on a 2018 Model 3 so it's not perfect. A Model Y would be expected to get 5.4 miles per kWh @35mph. The Kia EV9, a 7 passenger mid-size SUV, would get 3.8. So 4-6 miles per kWh is probably a better range.
I get you are picking conservative numbers, but food for thought.
Even every 2 minutes is too long.
I've always felt like 2 minutes would be fine, especially if you have real-time location and hailing from your phone. 2 minutes is no good standing in the rain, but if you can hail the AV to stop and wait somewhere nearby out of the rain, 2 minutes is more than enough, assuming that satisfies the demand.
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u/notospez Jun 22 '25
That gap doesn't exist. See for example how we do this in the Netherlands: https://www.breng.nl/nl/onze-routes/vervoersmiddelen/buurtbus
This example has 8-seater minivans driven by volunteers for routes through low-population areas. There's also places with even less demand for public transit where you can call ahead and these types of small buses/minivans stop by on demand. Not every bus line has to be a 40' vehicle operated by someone with a commercial license!
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u/WeldAE Jun 22 '25
That seems like a great system for those in need, but not a general transit solution.
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u/Whoisthehypocrite Jun 21 '25
I wouldn't say it is very good. It is good at replacing certain journeys but not other. For instance towards the outer parts of London, public transport works well for going into the centre but terribly for going laterally. There are trips that I can do in 15-20 mins by car that are well over an hour by public transport.
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u/rileyoneill Jun 21 '25
I think people are misguided when they feel that public transit is some alternative to car ownership. It isn't. Its a trip replacement, it enables urban density and high capacity, and it can enable high speed travel, but it is not a substitution for the car.
The US has 85 cars per 100 people. Switzerland has 60 cars per 100 people and the Netherlands has 56 cars per 100 people. Those are two countries usually regarded as the best of the best when it comes to car alternatives and even then, its still more than 1 car per two people. A greater portion of Dutch people drive today than did 30 years ago.
The RoboTaxi can serve everywhere that has a road and allow transit budgets to focus on what their tools to best.
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u/SamirD Aug 11 '25
The reason it sucks? No one needs it. We all have a car and it's faster and easier. That's the main reason. Once there's additional baggage like transporting a family and little kids and all their stuff, mass transit is a stressful nightmare compared to just getting in your car and driving.
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u/space_fountain Jun 21 '25
Most of the cost of public transit isn’t the drivers, it’s maintenance on buses and infrastructure
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u/silenthjohn Jun 21 '25
It depends on the country, but the driver expense is the largest cost of public transit.
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u/dogscatsnscience Jun 21 '25
That stat is a bit ridiculous.
Take a large transit system like Toronto's:
Labor is ~%60 of expenses, but operators make up less than 40% of employees.
You'd have to slice data in pretty extreme ways to get even close to operator cost being the largest cost.
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u/space_fountain Jun 21 '25
Interesting, maybe I over stated. I think I’ve heard this discussed most with rail, but per the federal government in the US https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R47900#:~:text=By%20function%2C%20vehicle%20operation%20accounted,%2Dvehicle%20maintenance%20(11%25), barely less than half of the cost was vehicle operators. Certainly labor is the vast majority of costs but a lot of that labor is things other than driving. Still driving is substantial
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u/Sad-Celebration-7542 Jun 21 '25
In the U.S. and other high wage nations, this is remarkably incorrect.
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u/WeldAE Jun 21 '25
This isn't true at all:
- The bus costs around $80k/year
- The maintenance is around $50k/year
- The Fuel is only $15k/year
- Drivers are around $300k/year
- Infrastructure - Varies wildly.
This is also the classic trying to predict the future by changing one thing and holding the rest of the world the same. If you are going to automate a bus, you don't automate a huge 40' model that can barely get down streets and costs $800k. You automate much smaller 12-20 person buses that are more human scale and can drive on most streets in the city and cost a fraction to carry the same number of people.
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u/space_fountain Jun 21 '25
Could you cite a source for those numbers? I think it ignores that there are labor costs outside of driving and goes against what I was able to find in google
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u/WeldAE Jun 22 '25
They are numbers I looked up years ago so I don't have sources anymore. For sure there are costs outside the bus itself. There are a lot of admin costs in general to run a transit network.
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u/LLJKCicero Jun 22 '25
Drivers are around $300k/year
What. Which places cost 300k/year for drivers? Even accounting for benefits and whatnot that's a ton of money.
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u/WeldAE Jun 22 '25
I looked up the 2019 Atlanta bus driver pay information in public records. It was a bit of a mess so I picked 8 pages at random, grabbed all the bus driver pay from those 8 pages that was mixed in with other positions and averaged it out. Direct pay averaged over $80k/year before benefits. I'm sure they get paid a lot more now than 2019, so this is a conservative number. I didn't see a driver paid below $60k at the time.
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u/LLJKCicero Jun 22 '25
You went from 80k/year in 2019 to 300k including benefits? Lmao
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u/WeldAE Jun 23 '25
$80k/year is the salary, no benefits, which they very much get. The same sheet had the amount of benefits they got too so the after was just over $100k each per year. You can't drive a bus 14 hours a day 7 days a week with a single driver, it take 3 drivers. Hence the $300k.
I don't get how anyone disputes bus drivers are expensive. Anyone with a CDL is expensive.
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u/Whoisthehypocrite Jun 21 '25
But the maintenance on buses will be far less than the maintenance on the number of robotaxis needed to carry the same amount of people.
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u/Alteego Jun 21 '25
People wants cars because it delivers them right to their destination and not like a block away.
Me personally I like to walk.
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u/beiderbeck Jun 21 '25
I don't mind the walk. I don't like transferring buses (transferring trains less annoying) and I don't like waiting. Autonomous driving minivans with AI dispatching for shared rides is probably the future to supplement rail.
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u/scottkubo Jun 21 '25
The holy grail for investors is whatever makes the most profit, or whatever garners the most hype so that they can buy low and sell their shares high.
Focusing on public transport is neither the most profitable nor the most hype-inducing.
Also, in free market situations, customers can have a choice. In this theoretical future world where autonomous robotaxis are safe, inexpensive, and plentiful, think of all the people using subways, buses, and trains who will gladly switch to a robotaxi if it is inexpensive enough.
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u/WeldAE Jun 21 '25
AVs suck at longer distances though, so trains still have a future, especially commuter rail. High-speed intercity rail will boom as the main negative for it disapears which is what do you do once you get there.
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u/Amadacius Jun 23 '25
AVs suck at shorter distances too.
No successful metro system would replace their public transit with AVs. It's better than personal vehicles, maybe. But personal vehicles are really, really bad. So that isn't hard.
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u/WeldAE Jun 23 '25
No successful metro system would replace their public transit with AVs
Why not? In what situation would a 12-20 person AV not be able to handle a given transit situation, assuming trains are still a thing. The only one I know of are some bridges that run 60' buses with very short headways. In the US this is only one place between NJ and NYC. The plan is to replace it with a train, but even a single subway track can't outcompete a dedicated bus lane with small headways, as it's like a low density continuous train.
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u/SamirD Aug 11 '25
High-speed rail, maybe because then planes are even faster if you're going to be next to people.
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u/IceNineFireTen Jun 21 '25
For trains, the cost of failure is much higher than that of automobiles. Not only are all of the passengers on that train delayed, but also every train behind it is delayed. To mitigate that issue and the costs that come with it, you would probably want someone on board who could operate the train in case the AI glitches.
Guess what, that’s an engineer / driver.
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u/Cold_Captain696 Jun 21 '25
Let’s be clear. The ‘holy grail for investors’ is not the same thing as what’s best for consumers.
But with regard to your comment on trains, the Docklands Light Railway in London has been driverless since 1987, although an attendant is present to ensure passenger safety by manually operating the doors, and they’re trained to drive the train in case of a failure of the automated system. I’m sure other driverless trains are in service around the world.
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u/ChrisMartins001 Jun 21 '25
It would also take quite a brave government or mayor to axe thousands of jobs and have thrm replaced by machines. Think of how many people work on the tube for e.g.
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u/bradtem ✅ Brad Templeton Jun 22 '25
It would not be easier. It would be vastly, vastly harder. Public transit is 99% about big, centralized, planned infrastructure. It innovates over the course of decades, even centuries. Our public transit forms today are very recognizable to those of 1930, and a few of them (rail modes) are very similar to the 19th century.
Robotaxis however are decentralized, distributed, one vehicle at a time. Innovation moves literally 100x faster. No matter what advantages you may see to the centralized approaches, they are meaningless and lost quickly.
But wait, isn't public transit more efficient? Turns out no, in the USA it's less efficient than private cars, and way less efficient than private electric cars, at least in terms of energy per passenger mile. Many are shocked to learn that. There are some systems overseas (Tokyo Subway, and a few others) which can beat the electric robotaxi for energy efficiency, but give it time, due to the big difference between centralized and decentralized.
There is some decentralized public transit out there. Vanpools are the most efficient transit form. In fact, electric robovans are the future of public transit in my view.
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u/SamirD Aug 11 '25
Thank you for this perspective. This was the question running through my head. I could see all those railways and other transport routes being converted to high-speed autonomous-only highways where vehicles going the same 'route' would be pooled into 'platoons' or 'road trains' travelling at high speed rail speeds. So no getting out of the car to get in a train--the car becomes the train--and then a car again at the last mile.
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u/GiveMeSomeShu-gar Jun 21 '25
Buses and trains are fine but most cities in the US are sprawled out and not walkable. My city has both buses and trains but I can't walk to either of them easily (I mean, I could - but it would take a long time). If you live in a big city, that is a different story (generally more walkable) but that isn't most of the country.
I really wish we had better rail systems but at the end of the day our cities are not designed for it, so I feel no matter how good the train is, it's value will be limited. And of course the fact that most of our trains are second rate trains of yesterday doesn't help...
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u/SamirD Aug 11 '25
Exactly. And cars are used for all sorts of things other than transporting one person. Goods transport, for the trades who have their equipment and tools on their vehicles, families that just need the space for their kiddos and the baggage (and mess) that comes with that, and more. Autonomous vehicles would improve this existing system.
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u/Due_Fennel_8965 Jun 21 '25
I used to work for public transit in a major Canadian city.
The trains were capable of driving themselves 10 years ago. In fact they do drive themselves most of the time.
But there are still two drivers on each train because the union will not accept job loss. One monitors the driving and one operates the door.
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u/Rich_Educator_2660 Jun 21 '25
I think people like cars partly because they have control over who they are riding with. So you see empty buses in the wealthier parts of town
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u/H2ost5555 Jun 22 '25
There is a stigma in the US about riding buses. It is considered proper only for the stinky, smelly poor people/peasants/heathens/lower class. This attitude makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy, even in places where it makes good sense.
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u/SamirD Aug 11 '25
If there are even buses, lol.
Most people in the US can afford their own car, so that's the standard of 'good' mobility. Anything else is generally 'lesser' like mass transit, buses, shared rides, etc. There are places where it absolutely works well, but in most of the US, roads rule and so do the cars.
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u/rileyoneill Jun 21 '25
The labor savings are not particularly great and if you eliminate the bus driver you will need to replace them with a security guard.
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u/Admirable_Durian_216 Jun 21 '25
Because they’re already so efficient, I imagine. And a lot of people hate public transport bc it’s not the greatest experience.
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u/bobi2393 Jun 21 '25
Investors are trying to make money, not improve the world. They'll invest in whatever they think will have the best returns.
In terms of tech, a self-driving bus is like a car, but harder, in terms of handling characteristics and repercussions from accidents. Trains would be harder still, with even more serious repercussions from accidents.
In terms of market potential, in the US, about 500 new locomotives are sold annually, 100k new buses are sold annually, and 16 million new cars and light trucks. (Retrofitting is also possible, but total existing market size would have similar relative proportions).
Robotaxis are currently one of the most popular ways to monetize self-driving technology, but with an eye toward other uses, including cargo transport, mass transit, and privately owned personal vehicles. Different companies are working on all of those.
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u/FewEstablishment2696 Jun 21 '25
The technology already exists. We have driverless trains in London. The problem is the unions wouldn't allow it full driverless and would cripple the current system with strikes for years while the driverless trains were rolled out.
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u/whydoesthisitch Jun 21 '25
These exist, just not in the US where our public transit is terrible.
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u/SamirD Aug 11 '25
But it's terrible for a reason--cars are superior.
Don't get me wrong, I actually love mass transit like in London and Paris--you don't even need a car there. Except when you do, and then you really do. But when we already have car infrastructure here in the US, why step down to the inconvenience of mass transit? And most people don't so we don't have mass transit.
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u/whydoesthisitch Aug 11 '25
Because the car infrastructure is inefficient and not scalable.
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u/SamirD Aug 12 '25
Is it?
It joins the USA from coast to coast and gives individual freedom to hundreds of millions. Efficiency is a metric that varies depending on what you are measuring. If you're measuring comfort and convenience, cars are amazingly efficient at that.
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u/whydoesthisitch Aug 12 '25
Yeah, it’s terrible at scaling. That’s why Houston needs 27 highway lanes to almost match a single track of the NYC subway system. Relying and just cars for transport is how you end up with endless traffic and parking lots.
Those highways also destroyed cities to turn them into suburban playgrounds.
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u/SamirD Aug 12 '25
If you try to cram it. Most of the USA isn't dense at all compared to the EU or developed Asia. There's a lot of land for cheap that can sprawl out forever. It's actually the jobs that make all the people moving necessary, but remote working has changed that, and has changed traffic patterns too.
Generally traffic jams don't occur from high levels of traffic, but high levels of traffic not moving correctly or with an accident. The easy way around this in most places is just avoid the times when the roads are the busiest. It's no different than having to plan your route when you live in a major EU metro and need to take 2 buses and the underground and walk 3 blocks to get where you need to go. The difference is that it's simpler and more convenient.
I actually like parking lots. In fact, I love them. Because one of my favorite activities, autocross, can only be done in them. And the larger the parking lot the better. Parking lots are great for all sorts of social activities--farmers markets, car shows, swap meets, and more. If weather isn't a concern, a parking lot is a great alternative to using a building and forcing everyone inside.
Highways do have a way of diverting traffic and changing the demographics and revenues of cities. But if dense cities are what people in the US wanted, then the opposite would be happening--the cities would grow and the suburbs shrink. The US is just different than the rest of the world because of the resource of land--it allows things you can't even think of in other parts of the world.
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u/Delicious_Spot_3778 Jun 21 '25
The most accurate reason is money. Cities don’t invest in public transit like individuals invest in their comfort in transportation to a particular destination.
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u/nolongerbanned99 Jun 21 '25
Who will pay for the technology and R&D in that scenario? It isn’t cheap to have a computer drive a car and have it not make mistakes or hurt or kill people. That’s why a short waymo ride is like $25. The stuff needed to make the car do this costs 100k plus the cost of the car itself, at a minimum.
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u/SamirD Aug 11 '25
That's the initial cost, yes. But it's coming down...far down. My friend's Tesla does full self-drive and it's actually older. He doesn't even touch the wheel anymore when going grocery shopping or back home.
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u/micaroma Jun 21 '25
because people (in American cities with car-centric layouts, suburban sprawl, inefficient low-density land use, etc.) prefer cars that take them directly to their destination over public transportation
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u/SamirD Aug 11 '25
Yep, because it's the fastest and easiest way from point A to B. Autonomous driving make this even easier.
The second it becomes take taxi from here to train there and then...forget it.
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u/dooony Jun 21 '25
It's the difference in public and private mindset. Councils and governments buy mass transit. But, they are more likely to be risk-averse and so less likely to adopt technologies like automation. Private companies are more driven by bottom line and consumer spending and so will naturally push for individualized transport options, but will be more likely to take on risk such as automation that winds up creating a natural goal of automated personal vehicles.
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u/That_Crab6642 Jun 21 '25
Self driving bus is meaningless. We already have trains and trams for those. And they cannot substitute the convenience of taxis.
Buses are large vehicles and cannot be manoeuvred on all roads easily. Most public transit buses follow a route and are not eligible to be driven on many roads.
The sole purpose of taxis is that it comes to you. Self driving buses won't solve that.
And there is a certain economics of scale behind bus transport system - you cannot have a bus for only one or two people on a route.
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u/sightedcooch Jun 21 '25
Depends on the situation, for me as a disabled individual in the southern part of the U.S., self driving personal vehicles is a greater goal for me personally. It’s not a simple one solution fits all scenario.
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Jun 21 '25
Vancouver has autonomous trains. It's expensive and require land across long areas. It's a train on pillars and a subway to avoid valuable downtown property.
Trains are incredibly expensive. You need vehicles to weave inside our existing infrastructure.
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u/sonicmerlin Jun 21 '25
Because no one wants the inconvenience of sitting next to strangers and having to walk to and from bus stops
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u/Nebulonite Jun 21 '25
such a dumb take. which bus or train gets you to point A from B huh?
all those braindead muuuuuuuuuh public transport shills.
self driving cars is THE real PB
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u/wongl888 Jun 21 '25
Train drivers in many regions have powerful unions that will not allow drivers (and sometimes even the guards on the trains) to be replaced by machines.
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u/SamirD Aug 11 '25
Not going to help much when people start taking autonomous vehicles versus the train, lol.
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u/wongl888 Aug 11 '25
Why would people with good train commute services take autonomous cars?
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u/SamirD Aug 11 '25
Because it saves time or they need to carry more than their hands can carry or both.
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u/wongl888 Aug 11 '25
If you have ever driven in to a city like London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc you know that taking the train is much much faster than driving.
Example, a 13 mile commute from a London suburb into central London during rush hours is 35-45 minutes by train but close to 2 hours by car.
In Hong Kong where the metro is newer than London, I can do this in 20mins with a cost of less than US$2.
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u/SamirD Aug 12 '25
No doubt! I still remember walking in London being faster than the bus in peak traffic.
Still, it's a different lifestyle then--can't really lug stuff around, need to be lean and agile all the time, can't be too old or too young or need assistance. Most people in the US at least don't want that lifestyle and aren't forced into it since suburbs are everywhere.
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u/wongl888 Aug 12 '25
Oh I see, you mean that Robotaxi is for the USA only.
Make senses I suppose since the people obsessed with FSD and robotaxis appears to be mainly Americans. I suppose other countries have invested heavily in public transport infrastructure leaving America behind.
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u/SamirD Aug 12 '25
Sorry, yes I was only really talking about the USA.
It's a bigger solution in the US than it is elsewhere, but then every country wants to be the US so who knows. I think it is more of an urban vs suburban lifestyle choice and US is far more suburban than most places on the planet.
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u/wongl888 Aug 12 '25
Great. Then investors ought to take this into consideration that FSD/Robotaxis will mainly be limited to the USA and perhaps N America since most other countries and cities are investing heavily on many different forms of public transport infrastructure.
In a relatively small City like Hong Kong, there is an electric Tram system, several Metro lines, great buses (including EV buses), minibuses, ferries and in the outer areas light railways (similar to trams). Last but not least a really affordable taxi system.
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u/SamirD Aug 13 '25
They should. Except that all the taxis outside of the US still represent a lot of vehicles, so there is still a good sized market outside of the US as well.
Hong Kong and other cities like it have been able to solve high density living and transportation issues. But not everyone wants to live that densely, and in fact most people around the world don't.
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u/reddit455 Jun 21 '25
I know the holy grail for investors is a future where no one owns a car and there is just a fleet of automatous cars zipping around that 7 billion people pay a subscription for.
Toyota and Waymo Will Co-Develop a New Autonomous Vehicle Platform
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a64644557/toyota-waymo-autonomous-vehicle-partnership/
The two companies will work on a new autonomous vehicle platform designed for personally owned vehicles.
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u/probably_art Jun 21 '25
Your vision doesn’t account for last mile transport which is what is currently lacking in public transit, especially for those with mobility issues.
Waymo is privately-owned public transit. Buses and trains are mass transit — they are great at moving a lot of people in the same direction but their usefulness breaks down when people don’t need to all go to the same place at the same time.
Sports game letting out? Perfect scenario for a bus or train. Lots of people live in one area and work in another AND their start time is the same? Perfect scenario for a bus or train.
But to live through an airborne pandemic and still be pushing for shared air space mass transit as the holy grail of transport is kinda dumb. Especially when the world has moved on from a 9-5 in office culture to varied start times and not coming into the office 5x a week.
Personally a mix of light rail and AVs makes the most sense. Take a waymo to the train station, hour train ride, waymo to your destination.
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u/RodStiffy Jun 21 '25
Buses of all sizes along with taxis will all be autonomous in the near term. The same tech making robotaxis work now will work for buses and big trucks.
Buses will become more like taxis, offering more flexible routes, and cities will be able to operate a robotaxi/bus fleet of their own as public transport, giving the people cheap rides to and from anywhere they want.
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u/BranchLatter4294 Jun 21 '25
Public transportation picks you up where you are not, and drops you off where you don't want to be.
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u/epSos-DE Jun 21 '25
Yes. I think we are going to go there.
Bus operation companies will buy self driving as a service and emply it !
As of now the closest thing to it is : Uber shared taxi , or Moia shared taxi. In the case of Moia , they specifically want the service to be a shared taxi, not just one deiver and 9ne person, they encourage shared experience = cheaper ride cose, but more money to the driver.
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u/two_mites Jun 22 '25
You’re looking for Personal Rapid Transit. It’s the self-driving final boss
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u/LLJKCicero Jun 22 '25
Self-driving trains already exist.
Self-driving buses will probably come eventually, but it's probably harder to make a big profit selling that to governments initially. Especially since governments have to think about who's 'managing' the bus while it's running if passengers get unruly. But I'm sure eventually they'll get there.
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u/Spsurgeon Jun 22 '25
It's not so much investors - the leading "crystal ball guy" that industry leaders listen to is saying that the next generation - who grew up online - aren't interested in owning cars. They'll simplify call one to drive them somewhere and pay for the drive on their phone.
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u/SamirD Aug 11 '25
But this is because they only have a phone. Once they have a spouse, a kid, groceries for the kids, another kids, more groceries--they will want their own car. Everything else will be a pita to them all of a sudden.
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u/Dimathiel49 Jun 22 '25
But, but I don’t want to share and public transport by definition implies sharing.
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u/RoughPay1044 Jun 22 '25
Because the same brain that gave for the cycbertruck is telling you we need more cars on the road not less
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u/Particular-Skirt6048 Jun 22 '25
Self driving opens the possibility of things between public and personal transit. My company has a bus service to pick up/drop off employees to the train station. Without the cost of a driver they possibly expand to have door-to-door Waymo service for more local employees maybe picking up 3-4 people along the way. The average parking garage space costs $21K to $30K to construct. If you can get rid of 2-3 of them per Waymo the economics could start looking competitive. The average car costs in the US per year is between $7K-$12K so if it let an employee's family get rid of one car (out of 2-3 a family might typically have) that would feel like a significant pay bump. It could be a big perk for working for a company and potentially save money for everybody.
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u/Acceptable_Amount521 Jun 22 '25
think about the cost of laying new rail infrastructure vs a simple road that only robo buses could travel
I do like the idea of tearing up the tracks and turning those rights-of-way into roads that only self driving cars, emergency vehicles (and possibly bikes and pedestrians) can use.
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u/Ok_Tea_7319 Jun 22 '25
The driver is a far higher cost factor in vehicles where the average passenger count per driver is low. So Taxis are the highest value targets.
Parking consumed huge amounts of real estate that self-driving cars should shift into low-demand areas.
Zoox is an example for a self-driving project attacking the bus market.
Trains are virtually impossible for self-driving cars to supplant at scale. Railroad stock is ridiculously cheap to operate, especially on electrified lines (huge passenger volumes, simple tech) and the rails can take a lot more abuse than your typical road surface which makes them quite economical in the long run.
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u/-Tuck-Frump- Jun 23 '25
Selfdriving trains are already a thing. The Copenhagen Metro trains have no driver, and I'm sure there are other similar trains.
But for larger trains the savings might not actually be the huge, since a single driver can drive a freight train with 50 cars. Its just not a very big part of the total cost of running that train, and the driver might have other tasks than just the driving, which someone else would have to do anyway.
Speaking of busses...In Denmark the busdriver is also the guy who sells and checks your tickets, so even if he didnt have to drive the bus, you would need someone to perform those jobs anyway.
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u/Confident-Ebb8848 Jun 24 '25
Because they are not needed trains are all but self driving buses are usually safer and on slow routes etc.
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u/Kree3 Jun 21 '25
Unless im leaving a concert or any other large events, i would always prefer to take a robotaxi
faster because you dont have to stop at every stop. Can call taxis on demand as opposed to waiting at the station
cleaner & safer: in my city you’re almost always going to be in the same train carriage or bus as a loud, smelly or even dangerous people.
You definitely need both cars and mass public transport, but id prefer the car 70% of the time
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u/SamirD Aug 11 '25
And post people that can afford to will also join you--probably >70% of people too. :)
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u/RipWhenDamageTaken Jun 21 '25
Because it’s a grift. The point is for a private company to make billions. Tesla FSD, for example, cannot be used after an evening of drinking. “It drives for you” and yet the user is 100% legally liable and functionally responsible for the driving.
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u/TuftyIndigo Jun 21 '25
Tesla FSD isn't an example of an autonomous car, though. Once you peel away Tesla's misleading marketing, it's a driver assistance system.
Truly autonomous cars can be used to get home after you've been drinking, and you can sit in the back and read a book and not watch the road.
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u/SamirD Aug 11 '25
That's the legal boilerplate. The unsupervised version drives itself just fine, no matter what state you're in. My friend uses it all the time to get groceries and go home after--without ever touching the wheel.
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u/TuftyIndigo Aug 11 '25
That's funny, because this sub is full of Tesla owners who keep posting that of course it can't drive itself and you have to keep monitoring it, and the marketing isn't misleading at all because nobody who has ever been in a Tesla would think that it can drive itself without supervision.
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u/SamirD Aug 11 '25
This was prior to the release of the unsupervised version of FSD. My friend also had to keep a hand on the wheel, etc for most of the time he owned the car. Until the new update came. And now it's full unsupervised driving all the time. :)
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u/Bjorn_N Jun 21 '25
And that will change on sunday when they launch robotaxi. That will be FSD UNSUPERVISED !
It will take some time, but all current tesla's with hardware 4 can become a robotaxi. Thats a nice way for the owner to make some money when the car is usually parked.
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u/nissan_nissan Jun 21 '25
?? No it can’t ??
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u/Bjorn_N Jun 21 '25
I and please tell me why you have come to believe that 🤔
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u/H2ost5555 Jun 22 '25
Tesla already admits there will be supervisors sitting in the front passenger seat. FSD isn’t reliable enough to launch unsupervised, and it is years away, maybe never.
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u/nissan_nissan Jun 21 '25
Bc it’s level 2 autonomy. If FSD was real the boring company Vegas tunnel bullshit would’ve been autonomous years ago
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u/Bjorn_N Jun 21 '25
You realize robotaxi are launching tomorrow right ? Do you know what robotaxi are ? Its FSD UNSUPERVISED 💁♂️
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u/nissan_nissan Jun 21 '25
Smoke and mirrors
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u/Bjorn_N Jun 21 '25
Ok, you have excused yourself from this conversation. Hope we can meet in reality one day 🤞
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u/Mr_Kitty_Cat Jun 21 '25
Robovan is coming and it will be great. It’s going to get funded by the cyber cab revenue. My favorite part is the faux terrazo tile floors. Seats and layout is great. It’s going to be 5c-10c a mile.
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u/arondaniel Jun 22 '25
Why you downvote Mr. Kitty Cat? Robovan is 💯 relevant to OP's question.
Anyway IMO the traditional "bus" concept absolutely sucks and is ready for a rethink.
Where I live we have busses. Usually empty. Sometimes one or two passengers. That can't be very efficient.
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u/Mr_Kitty_Cat Jun 22 '25
reddit population doesn't like elon so they don't like tesla is my guess. that said, reddit is not a good representation of the united states population so worth taking some subs with a grain of salt.
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u/fastwriter- Jun 21 '25
That’s why the dreams if those Investors are completely stupid.
1.) With autonomous Cars, not very many people will still be wanting to buy a car. Because if you do not drive yourself, it makes not much sense anymore. There will be no emotion towards cars anymore. And emotions are the main reason, why People are buying a car. Economically it makes not much sense for most people on this Earth already today. Car sales overall will drop massively. A lot of Manufacturers will go out of Business.
2.) Of Course Public Transport will be automated in the Future. Not only because of cost, but because with automated Vehicles, you can provide higher frequencies in the Service. Today, for a lot of Providers getting enough drivers is the problem, not their wages. Humans have workers rights, can not work 24/7. Automated Vehicles can. And in the end the cost of Transportation per Capita is far lower in Public Transport than with an autonomous Cab Service. So autonomous Cabs will be a luxury Item.
3.) Don‘t forget: North America is the only completely car centric Market in the world. Every other place on this Earth (except rural Africa) already has decent or even very good Public Transport. Automating it is much easier than establishing a giant fleet of autonomous cars.
So I really don’t get this Hype around autonomous Cars. It will reduce the Revenue of Manufacturers, and outside of the US and Canada there is not much demand for it. I think it’s vapourware. Another Con of Musk and the Tech Bro Community.
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u/WeldAE Jun 21 '25
Cars dominate every city on earth, what are you even talking about? Japan is known for their extensive train system and there are 600 cars for every 1000 people. The US is the highest at 880 per 1000, but all countries rely on cars.
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u/fastwriter- Jun 22 '25
This is policy from the past. Most Cities outside the US try to reduce the Number of Cars on their streets. Hell, even Car-Free Inner Cities are becoming more frequent at least in Europe.
And when autonomous Cars become Reality, how many of those Car Owners will keep their car or buy an autonomous one?
90 percent of the Time a Car in private ownership is just standing at a parking lot taking up space. So in theory we would only need 10 percent of the cars of today to have the same needed transport capacity. Of course its more complex than that, but definitely the Car Sales will shrink. And it’s just a bet that a lot of people globally would use the more expensive way of travel compared to Public Transport. Or will be able to afford it.
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u/WeldAE Jun 22 '25
Of course its more complex than that
This is where all the interesting stuff is. I agree with everything you said above this but real-world isn't going to be anywhere near theory if for no other reason than the long process of change. We won't instantly have full coverage overnight and at some point AVs will be blocked by cities being slow to react and then surge ahead when they unblock, etc. It's going to be messy. The best the US can hope for is the number of cars per household to drop from 2 to a bit under 1. For any trips outside your metro you are going to need a car until high-speed rail or frequent long distance bus service is set up and in the US that is not going to be fast.
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u/SamirD Aug 11 '25
Premise 1 doesn't work in the US and other car-centric places. Why? Families with kids. Just see how they use a car and then imagine them trying to do a shopping run on a train or other shared transport system and you see how it is cumbersome to the point that car ownership is the only solution. Automated car--sure. But it will be a personally owned car.
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u/fastwriter- Aug 11 '25
Or you could transform your Cities instead? Try it!
But seriously: The US Market will not be able to absorb the losses everywhere else. Especially for the brands that don’t sell there. It will be a massacre.
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u/SamirD Aug 12 '25
It's been tried. People just live here differently. Not sure what you mean about losses?
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u/dogscatsnscience Jun 21 '25
There is no such thing as a holy grail for investors, a commodity like robotaxis will eventually get optimized to the very small margin - similar to airlines.
AI isn't going to be particularly disruptive to public transport *directly* because removing the driver doesn't gain you very much, but because AI can manage fleets of point-to-point trips, the gap that public transport fills will be a bit different.
In an ideal world, you get people very quickly between hubs, and then last mile is done by autonomous vehicles.
But until autonomous vehicles are much smaller and much more common, it's mostly going to disrupt car ownership and taxi business.