Do you know how much it costs to buy a bus? It is not unusual to pay 400k+ for a city bus. Let's say driverless cars will cost $20k each (I have no idea), that's 20 cars per bus.
I suggest the only reason taxi trips are so much more expensive than bus rides is the cost of medallions and driver wages.
Once driverless cars arrive, public buses will not make sense anymore.
> Once driverless cars arrive, public buses will not make sense anymore.
How is that exactly? Buses have routes and schedules. How could you plan a schedule with cars if you don't know where everyone is going? You would have to have excess capacity, that's how. And those extra cars will be more expensive than the bus.
This is only an issue during peak times. Most of the time during the day, buses are fairly empty.
If driverless car companies use something like uber's surge pricing, so that it is more expensive to travel 1/2hr before/after peak, people will respond, flattening out peak demand.
Intelligent routing software will assist, allowing people to car pool to reduce the required number of cars.
Finally, let's say if automated cars remove half the riders from buses, the costs of providing buses will need to be spread across half the number of riders, making the economics of running a bus system twice as expensive per passenger. At that point, it makes sense even more sense to replace the buses with cars.
The only question will be how long it takes for people to adapt due to existing habits having momentum.
If the bus is full, I'm sure you're correct. I think there will always be place for mass transit along popular routes.
In the UK there are a lot of buses that drive around with only a handful of passengers. It's a subsidised service that's important to lots of people, but ultimately very inefficient. I'd imagine at least 60% of bus movements (not passenger miles) could be replaced with self-driving cars.
I suggest the only reason taxi trips are so much more expensive than bus rides is the cost of medallions and driver wages.
Once driverless cars arrive, public buses will not make sense anymore.
http://publictransport.about.com/od/Transit_Vehicles/a/How-M...