Road design, transportation and walkability

[ijmorlan]

I was just making a random Internet comment, but that’s a good question

I think I was thinking like a taxi, but without the labour expense. So on-demand. That’s not to say that autonomous vehicles couldn’t do scheduled services, but part of the point of transit vehicles and especially larger ones like articulated or double-decker buses and LRT vehicles or trains is to have one driver drive many people. If we’re talking about a small vehicle, it probably makes more sense for it to go where it is requested.

Given unlimited road capacity and parking availability, I agree. But as those are constrained, the problem with the taxi model is that AV taxis potentially consume just as much parking space and road capacity as private cars. And the energy they consume is not free, either, even if they are built as energy-efficient.

I think you forgot what I said in the message the message I was replying to was replying to: “Autonomous vehicles would hypothetically be great for low-volume public transit”, then I gave a specific example and finished by observing that “They have no place substituting for any rail service or even a busy bus line.”. I am well aware that autonomous vehicles, even if they can be made to work as well as one imagines when one thinks of autonomous vehicles, cannot handle the high traffic associated with dense urban areas.