Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
An interesting question would be do you continue to subsidize mass transit in a world of automated cars?
If a commuter car becomes a 3 wheeled pod that drives itself within inches of the nearest vehicles you get the density of transit plus the flexibility of cars.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by accord1999
I agree, mass transit would be very hard pressed in such a world and things like full size buses would probably disappear. I can still see rail but only in routes and places that make sense, such as the very large cities.
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While autonomous vehicles will certainly change the face of mass transit (and electric buses already have in many places), outright elimination in large cities is unlikely for a very long time.
In dense urban areas, mobility is largely a geometrical problem, not a technological one. A significant portion of the commuter base still needs to be traveling on large high-capacity vehicles that allow for many of the passengers to be standing. Mass use of smaller autonomous vehicles will bring with them some operational and geometrical efficiency, but not enough to entirely replace the need for large mass transit capacity.