> Whereas, especially for transportation options that involve multiple people in a vehicle, the cost of a driver isn't really all that much relative to the overall cost of operating a vehicle.
Do you have a source on this? It’s my understanding that most mass transit systems in the US spend a huge amount on operator compensation. BART, the one I’m most familiar with, spends $500m of its $691m operating budget on salary and benefits [0] despite the fact that BART trains already drive themselves!
First off, you cannot ignore the $876mm capital portion of the budget; that money needs to come from somewhere.
Second, that $500mm covers every employee of BART. The administrators, maintenance personnel, police, and other non-operator functions do not go away. Without knowing what portion of that line item goes to operators one cannot make a judgement on how much cheaper the system would be without them.
Of course you're right; my comment was mostly tongue-in-cheek. Actual train operator salaries probably cost BART about $50m annually, not $500m. In both the cases of BART and private cars, the money to pay for tracks or roads comes from taxpayers. The trains themselves are now 40+ years old, and are finally being replaced at a cost of ~$300m this year. Grandparent post specifically talked about operating costs though.
All that said, trains are basically the most efficient mode of transport from a (number of drivers) / (number of passengers) perspective.
But speaking seriously for a moment:
- Lyft charges riders about $2/mile in the Bay Area [0] before fees.
- The IRS lets you depreciate your vehicle at a rate of $0.545/mile.
- A reasonably efficient car burns ~40 mpg on freeway, at $3.50/gallon that's ~$0.09/mile.
So, of the $2/mile the riders pay, about 1/3 of that is costs associated with purchasing and operating the vehicle (according to IRS estimates) and fuel.
If we eliminate the rest via autonomous driving, and taxis became 65% cheaper, I suspect many people would make much more use of them.
Utilization rates are 50-58% for Uber or Lyft. When you take it into account that a taxi is not en route 100% of the time, and add the cost (interest, depreciation) of a much more expensive vehicle, I think your 65% savings go up in smoke.
Sorry, I'm not smart enough for this comment to stick with me. Could you walk me through how 50% utilization means the savings go up in smoke?
The most compelling thing I can pull from your comment is "autonomous cars will be 3x as expensive as regular cars (at least), so you won't save anything". That may be short-term true, but is almost certainly long-term false.
A 50% utilization compared with 100% utilization makes almost no difference in vehicle cost structure -- if anything, it actually increases the labor fraction of taxi cost.
If you're driving your car 50% of the time, then wear and milage is the dominant depreciation factor (rather than age). But a human sitting around doing nothing but waiting for that 50% of the time doubles the labor (time) cost of the service, suggesting an even greater savings from eliminating the human driver.
I was assuming humans and self-driving cars both get revenue from riders, but don't get paid in between. And I'm interpreting utilization as the percentage of the time that riders are paying.
Do you have a source on this? It’s my understanding that most mass transit systems in the US spend a huge amount on operator compensation. BART, the one I’m most familiar with, spends $500m of its $691m operating budget on salary and benefits [0] despite the fact that BART trains already drive themselves!
[0]: https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/FY18_Budget_Su...