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The Driverless Future: Buses, Not Taxis
jfruh writes Driverless vehicles are coming. The question is: what form will they take? Uber's management has suggested that, rather than owning our own private, autonomous cars, we'll all be glad to pay Uber by the trip for a private ride in one. But an Italian consultant working on experimental driverless vehicles in Europe thinks that the future will lie with automated buses, because driverless cars, "may be able to go and park themselves out of harm's way, they may be able to do more trips per day, but they will still need a 10 ft wide lane to move a flow of 3600 persons per hour ... their advantages completely fade away in an urban street, where the frequent obstacles and interruptions will make robots provide a performance that will be equal, or worse than, that of a human driver, at least in terms of capacity and density."
Uber's management has suggested that, rather than owning our own private carriages, we'll all be glad to pay Uber by the trip for a ride in a rented hackney.
Heading to Dallas, Cotton Bowl, TXJAM III. Bus, back seat, center. Driver came back to look around at a side-of-road stop. I notice the bus was rolling backwards! I said, the bus is rolling back. He said, "What?". I said, "look out the window." He RUNS up front and hits the brakes. I saved the day. Gas pumps, etc. Now would it be better without a driver?
Buses are too large and awkward to snake around city streets. Buses need to make periodic stops every so often, and each stop is usually wastes the time of over half of its occupants. Then there's the difficulty of the bus to re-join traffic after making a stop. Buses have inefficiencies up the wazoo.
If you go from ten single-occupancy cars to a ten-passenger bus, you've eliminated 90% of the vehicles at the (relatively low) cost of adding one more driver. Eliminating the bus driver gets you from eleven people in the bus to ten, which is probably not as important as other efficiency improvements. Also, buses are awful unless you have quite high population density -- lots of areas don't have enough prospective trip endpoints to justify mass transit.
I don't think any more people will take driverless buses than take driven buses now.
The problem with buses is not with drivers/driverless. It's that people don't want to take 45 minute milk-runs, stopping 20 times, to get where they can go in 10 minutes driven directly.
Buses are already better than private cars for human transportation in urban environments. Problem is, humans are extremely selfish and many of them want to feel superiority by driving on their own (and taking all that space on the street, causing congestions). Autoindustry lobby doesn't help either.
This is way out there, unlikely to happen, but just maybe there will be a combination of cars and buses? Maybe if you have a similar starting location and stopping location and time as hundreds of other people you will take mass transit, and if you do not fall into an easy categorisation as everyone else you will have custom options?
I know, that is crazy. No system would ever be built like like.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I guess none of those people actually go to work by car. I'd pay a lot for the luxury of having my car drive itself to work and back every day. It would remove a lot of stress and fatigue from my days.
I don't see the link between autonomous vehicles and fundamentally changing the economies of own versus rent. Whether a bus has a driver or not, it makes the same amount of sense to use it instead of other transportation. It may lower the bus fare some, but in the scheme of operating a bus the driver pay isn't going to change things more drastically than, say, improvements in fuel efficiency. I doubt there are many people for whom the bus fare today was the factor making it unfit for their purposes.
I agree with the assertion that autonomous buses would be more bang for the buck for autonomous operation (not only the space efficiency, but having autonomous software navigate a pre-defined route is easier than navigating arbitrary routes).
Look, driverless rail already exists. Look at Vancouver BC. It's safe, and cheap to operate.
But the urban designer's want at-grade surface light rail in Surrey BC. Light Rail that requires drivers, and safety equipment installed at every grade crossing.
Now think about a driverless bus. If light rail systems can't figure out how to go driverless at grade, what makes Uber or Google so sure they could have a conventional bus that operates on the same route any better?
People (humans) do not respect bigger slower vehicles. The amount of times people die in at-grade collisions per rail system makes light rail more lethal than buses. Why on earth would any city consider building non-automated at-grade light rail, when it's cheaper to just build an unattended driverless metro in the first place?
I can work in a car. I can't work in a bus. The car is a private space where I can talk and pick my nose.
If busses were the answer for middle class transport we would see a luxury version of the greyhound.
But who is going to supervise the children and stop[ fights and bullying? I can't see a robot being very effective on typical school buses.
Or are we talking about coaches? (The long distance buses run by Greyhound and Jefferson Lines) ?
I thought the whole point of automated cars was to improve safety by taking the distracted amateur out of the drivers seat, and also permit impaired people (whether disabled, intoxicated or just tired) to have personal transportation which is necessary in most non-metropolitan USA towns.
In a future where cars drive themselves, and everyone will eventually own one or enslave themselves into the machine to own one, efficiencies of public transportation will eventually become evident sooner rather than later.
In a perf^H^H^H^Hless corrupt world, imagine the amount of investment it took for everyone to own driverless cars, city roads/highways redesigned to better meet demands of algorhythmic traffic flow, wireless internet infrastructure to support millions of transportees looking for something to do when they no longer have the burden of steering a 2 ton hunk of steel through 5-50 miles of obstacles. Imagine where we'd already be today if that amount of investment was put into a public transport system. Instead, they're a joke.
1. Timetables seem to be set arbitrarily instead of easily matching demand. Why are ratio of rail cars 2:1 for heavy:light traffic times as opposed to 5:1, 10:1 in some cities? They have the extra cars. Buses don't seem to be increased at all.
2. Rates raised to meet some sort of corporate profit model. We don't want to be in the red, because our taxpayers will not see public transportation as an investment to helping our city grow as we increase job opportunity and liquidity. It's just important that everyone doesn't see our public transportation as a burden. So instead, let's run less cars to cut costs, ignoring economies of scale and increase rates because people would be pay $100 a month for a shitty public transport pass when it would cost them $125 otherwise in gas. Some middle management guy took an econ 101 class and he learned about this thing called a supply demand graph and that's how we should model our "business", not as a civil duty we have to growing a city wide utility.
3. NIMBY assholes have enough clout to stop what should be the most obvious need public transportation has, to go where its citizens need to go. Instead of getting smacked down by eminent domain, they whine enough that an entire city needs to avoid some rich area so their white fear can be assuaged.
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Perhaps in very dense cities, but nowhere else.
Now that I can believe.
Driverless cars won't be allowed on the road unless they are incredibly safe in cities.
The number of red flags that will cause the driverless car to stop will be huge.
1) Child walking along the curb
2) Child jogging along the curb
3) Child sprinting along the curb
4) Child sprinting along the curb, with their head turned slightly, looking into the road
5) Child sprinting, head turned, looking at a small piece of paper or card being blown across the road
Driverless car has to hit the brakes by scenario number 3).
I can slow down slightly, veer closer to the middle of the road and await further events for 3,4 and 5, because I don't have to plan for 1/1,000,000,000 chances, where the driverless car is forced to. Result: Until driverless cars reach critical mass, they will slow down city traffic on average.
Lets say cost of automation is actually less than cost of hired driver. In a taxi that cost saving divides between 1-4 passangers. In a bus same cost saving divides between 50 passangers. Clearly you win more in a taxi. However its easier to automate a bus, because it only needs to drive one predefined route. It makes more economic sense to automate a taxi than it does to automate a bus. It is however somewhat easier to automate a bus. Buses and taxis serve a slightly different functions, so it might never come to the point where one replaces the other. But if it does then it will be taxi. A bus will always be cheaper than a taxi, but automation can make both so cheap that cost saving becomes moot and taxi is preferable for convenience. For example, most westerners visiting poor countries will discover that taxis are so cheap that buses are simply not worth the hassle. Thats because the drivers don't earn all that much, robots don't need wages eighter.
Why does the answer have to be either 'taxi' or 'bus' when it's possible to combine the two and have a sensible multi-drop scheme? This would need a decent number of users (Higher than that needed to sustain a local bus company, I'd guess), but would manage to combine the two nicely, and with computerised routing of vehicles should be practical.
Like a taxi you book from where you are, and it'll come to collect you there and drop you off at your requested destination. Unlike a taxi though there could be others riding already, and the vehicle may divert to make pick ups/drop offs on the way within reason.
The result is something which is similar to a less direct taxi, but will be a a lot cheaper as it's multi-occupant and will have passengers almost continually, similar to a bus. It also means that there are less vehicles on the road as each one is carrying more people, and this reduction would actually improve as the service became more popular- it's easier to have efficient routes when there are more options available. Vehicles would likely range from large cars to small buses, things small enough to get through residential areas (I'm in the UK where getting something the size of a full bus down a side street would be impressive) but large enough to carry a few small groups of people.
If you want to keep the 'bus' mentality too then have scheduled pick-ups over the most-used routes, so 'There will be a vehicle arriving at Easterly School every ten minutes traveling to the city center, and arriving forty minutes later'. This may also do other pickups and drop-offs on the way but will arrive more or less when it says unless there are problems.
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Surely there the money is in private automobiles, but before we start jumping ecstatically about this thing, shouldn't there first be a proof of concept in a streetcar system or something? This would be ideal environment for beta testing this, because unlike undergrounds that are essentially closed systems, streetcars are not, but the system wouldn't need to care about actually steering just yet, only stay in schedule and not hitting anything.
My family rode the bus for years, and it was ridiculous: being around drunks, disgustingly smelly people, once sitting in someone's piss, bus drivers talking on their cell phones while driving, bus drivers not watching the road while driving, idiots bumping into you, people getting on the bus smelling like shit, being late for work because drivers can't show up on time, etc.
Also, as someone else here alluded to, what once took me about an hour and a half each way is now a 15 minute drive.
A large proportion of people will not willingly share their commute space with others. Since people who "vote with their feet" seem to prefer to drive their own cars in privacy to sharing a vehicle, route and schedule with other people the rider may not like, it will take more than engineering to get the intended result. It will mean, eventually, either outlawing ownership of private cars in certain places or making permissions prohibitively expensive.
I see a big, expensive failure in this. Nevertheless, it will get funded by groups who are obviously against union labor: the Koch brothers, government planners, et al. Retailers like Wal-Mart, on the other hand, will be against, as they have few stores within cities, and it's hard to lug their stuff home on a minibus. Amazon and other internet sellers will see the same cost-without-benefit scenario.
The winners? Media outlets who will see an increase in revenues of "for-and-against" political ads.
Could we robotize the baggage handling system first? Driverless luggage carriers and robots won't need background checks, won't pilfer, and don't interact with third parties out in the tarmac (less likely to encounter ambulance chasing lawyers out to sue Google for fender bending).
Gently reply
I may be taking public transport, or share a car with people, but NEVER using a service provided by that company.
In the US driverless cars will win, generally because the US infrastructure and cities are built for car ownership; generally speaking US cities have a lower population density than other countries. In larger, higher density cities such as in China and some parts of South America, buses will be the way to go as they're decently clean and having too many cars in those high density cities is a huge negative. In many European cities it'll be a mixed bag; I see small driverless cars being useful in the tight streets of Paris, but some other European cities buses are more convenient. In places like North Africa and Europe, long bus rides are one of the primary methods of inexpensive commute between cities (a cheaper alternative to trains and they more easily connect places without train tracks), so buses will be much more cost efficient than cars for >1 hour trips.
It depends a lot less on the type of the technology and much more on the infrastructure in a given city as well as the type of commute/infrastructure.
If we do not own our own cars and no drivers are needed, would cars even look like they do today? I don't think so.
The problem today is that cars are expensive. If I am going to own one, it does not makes sense to drop that kind of cash for a tiny little car. The incentive is to buy something bigger than can be useful in other situations (e.g., picking up a relative at the airport). At the end, all the extra space we buy is for the most part wasted. We do not use that extra space most of the time.
Rather than moving toward buses, I find it more likely that the shape of cars would change. For the daily commute, perhaps you would get something that would be just about half as thin as a regular car and you would pay a lower rate. If you need a trunk (e.g., buying groceries), you would pay a little more for a bigger ride. etc
Driverless electric cars that don't go faster than 20 mph don't need to be very aerodynamic. Parts of people's routes are often shared, or park-n-rides wouldn't work. Driverless cars could slowly go to assembly spots where they link up into trains, and then the trains go fast on predetermined routes to other spots where they disassemble back into cars that slowly travel the last 1/8 mile to individual destinations. It'll enact the functionality of public transport for people wealthy enough to own personal pods. The big problem is the space consumed protecting against impact from human driven vehicles.
And the "driverless" part is entirely optional. Cities with good public transportation already demonstrate how it is done.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The best is not to focus on only one solution.
I could see both as a great addition to what is already there at a different price. Also different depending on where it is. Rome, Italy will have different requirements compared to Bettles, Alaska so I do not see how only one solution will fit all.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
if Driverless tech ever becomes viable, it will be used on long haul trucks. I could see long haul truck depots with Easy on/off to the highways. The computer system drives the truck to another depot when the owner picks up the truck for the final short distance. The bulk of the time of hauling goods is done on highways. Truck companies could replace dozens of drivers with just one driver, that remains local and just pick ups and drops off trucks at the depot. A Human operator would be needed to navigate the truck to its final destination and park the truck at the loading dock.
This would make economical since it would save them the bulk of labor expense driving the load over the long distances. Highways are generally easier to navigate than local roads, although it may not be practical for urban regions where congestion and complex intersections would make it difficult for a computer system. However there are lots of highways that are straight for hundreds of miles and need minimal though to navigate (ie West and Mid West).
It is a claim by an MP in UK Parliament, made back in 2005.
They got their number by essentially guessing. Cause there is no such number as "passengers per vehicle".
Fuel consumption estimates for buses are based on National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (NAEI) estimates combined with road passenger kilometres taken from the 2002 Transport Statistics for Great Britain.
Except there is no such value as "passenger kilometres" for buses in the source as you can't use that for buses - cause they operate by "zones" and not by destinations.
Same price for one stop as it is for three or five and passengers keep getting on and off along the way.
A ticket price is not related to the of distance that a passenger WILL BE traveling but to the MAXIMUM distance ALLOWED to travel.
So, they rounded it down to the lowest common denominator.
"9 passengers average" might be stretched as technically not a "wrong" number - just factually completely inaccurate as an average, minimum or maximum number of passengers.
It's actually the minimum number of passengers a bus must be able to carry in order to NOT BE CONSIDERED a "not-a-bus".
If it talks like a bus, drives like a bus... then it is not a taxi, which CAN be used as a bus but it is NOT a bus.
So what is a bus? Anything from 9 seats and up.
Transport Statistics Great Britain, 2002, 5 Public Transport: Notes and Definitions
Taxi industry: 5.9
A taxi, or hackney carriage, is a vehicle with
fewer than 9 passenger seats which is licensed to
âoeply for hireâ (i.e. it may stand at ranks or be
hailed in the street by members of the public).
This distinguishes taxis from Private Hire
Vehicles (PHVs), which must be booked in
advance through an operator and may not ply for
hire (taxis may also be pre-booked). Taxis must
normally be hired as a whole (i.e. separate fares
are not charged to each passenger). However,
taxis may charge separate fares when a sharing
scheme is in operation, when they are run as a
bus under a special PSV operators' licence or
when pre-booked (PHV operators may also
charge passengers separately if they share a
journey).
5.2 Bus and coach services: vehicle stock:1 1990/91-2000/01
1990/91 1991/92 1992/93 1993/94 1994/95 1995/96 1996/97 1997/98 1998/99 1999/00 2000/01
Single deckers:
Thousands
up to 16 seats 8.1 7.9 8.7 9.4 9.3 8.8 10.0 10.5 10.9 11.6 10.9
17-35 seats 11.5 12.4 13.5 14.5 15.9 16.5 16.6 13.6 14.4 13.9 15.0
36 plus seats 30.2 29.8 29.5 30.8 30.4 30.8 30.5 34.9 36.4 37.8 38.0
All single deckers 49.8 50.1 51.7 54.7 55.6 56.1 57.1 59.0 61.7 63.2 63.8
All double deckers 22.2 21.3 20.9 20.1 19.7 19.6 18.6 17.1 17.0 16.8 15.9
All vehicles 71.9 71.4 72.7 74.8 75.3 75.7 75.7 76.1 78.7 80.0 79.7
That "9 passengers average" is like saying that average number of seats for motor vehicles is 1 - because motorcycles.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
in Europe they have free health care so if you lose your job you are ok but in the usa the union will fight like hell to keep the jobs.
The problem with bus routes is that you need to know them and they're relatively static. The internet, search engines and cellphones all made it possible to look up the schedules from a bus stop. What we never tried was adapting the bus schedules to current demand. What if the bus schedule could change on-demand based on who is at which bus stop? What if you didn't have to ride for 30+ stops to get where you're going. Computers are capable of solving these routing problems much faster than we can, and usually optimally. ...and then I realize these things are going to be written by hordes of underpaid interns. I foresee lots of bodies piled up in the interstate.
Driverless allows high efficiency very small people movers. Buses are per person mile very inefficient in energy use, pollution and especially convenience. They are only efficient in the first two when full to capacity which they are only during major commute rushes. The future of self-driving vehicles is highly flexible, electric powered, on demand minimal vehicles for the job. Anything else is nonsense.
The Italian consultant is designing for maximum transport capacity, instead utility to the passengers. Private cars give you your own personal space, and provide convenient storage of items that you are transporting. A system that provides for both privately owned and rented cars gives better service to its users. Such a system could include small buses for people who are transporting only themselves. The reason most buses today are large is due to the cost of the driver. When the bus is automated, you can afford to make it smaller.
You need to understand that Italy, being of of the cradles of our civilization, changed little since antiquity, gothic or the renaissance. Cities are densely packed and streets are narrow. It is not possible to make way for wider streets or more parking spaces, because over 50% of buildings are protected historic inheritance. The italo-maniac anglo-americans would be worst offended if anyone proposed to tear down a church or palazzo here and there or fill in an early christian grotto with rubbish to support the construction of a new intersection.
This situation may be alien to many of US readership, where any village or town is happy if able to showcase a single building over 90 years old, but will not refrain from ousting it in case some profitable business needs the sport. After all, most historic US construction is made in wood, thus will not last the same way as Italy's burnt bricks or stone masonry do. Essentially, unless some earthquake happens, those old buildings are not going to go away. E.g. in Venice, some 15th century palazzos still have bricks in their walls that came from ancient roman villas on the mainland, which were razed by Attila the Hun, circa 450 AD. In Tuscany, there are 50-99 meter tall brick living towers, surviving from the 12-13th century. (One must wonder about their habitability, as there was no elevator tech back then.)
In some European movies of the 1950-60s, various mini-micro cars, like the Fiat 500, the Citroen CV2, the Mini Morris or the weirdness called "Messerschmitt Kabinenroller" are quite recognizable. This trend still exists in Japan (where only "keicar" size class minicars can be purchased without owning a garage lot or having paid 3 years' rent in advance for a spot). In Europe, the new FIAT 500 is back in the making, as well as the Smart. Suzuki sells many borderline micro sized mini-cars in Europe and the Opel Corsa / Adam isn't an V8 Elvis Cruiser either.
The problem is, a car does not occupy its lenght, but more like 1,5-2x of that. When cars are travelling on the road or idling in a traffic jam, there is significant distance fender-to-fender. With automation, this could be reduced to papaer-thin, but if automation fails, cars would need much better crash resistance, thereby needing to make them longer, with beefier crush zones at the front and the back.
Whomever wrote this is a fool.
When you need a car, truck or whatever, you need that mode of transport. If all you need is to move your ass down the street a short way, a bus is helpful. Walking works too. And In so many cases, walking is faster than a bus -- why don't you walk fool?
They are not the same, not even remotely.
what driverless cars can replace is commuter vehicles, especially outside city cores. They will be more convenient than zip cars (in the current state) or the like, after all they come to your door. A bus doesn't, unless your door is where the bus is. Owning a car may seem ridiculous if you order up one, step outside and its there for you - drops you off at your destination and goes off to help another traveller or 2.
By the way, who says it has to fit more than 1 person? or more than 2 peopel?
How often do you travel with more than 1 person? I know my answer. 1%
What's your time worth? I know my answer.
You mean the object isn't safety? And maybe labor costs? How close are we supposed to pack everybody? Let's not make this like the airlines. We need legroom!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Cars go exactly where you want them to, when you want to go. Buses don't. This rules against robo buses for general transportation except in the situation that you live on a bus route.
You can already pay a lot for the luxury of having your car drive you to work everyday: It's called a chauffeur. What you probably meant is that you'd only pay a moderate amount for that kind of luxury, which will be possible once automated driving makes it affordable enough.
Since driverless cars can be within an inch of each-other with no deleterious effect you can fit 3 lanes of driverless cars in 1 12' traffic lane, therefore moving three times as many people as the other lanes and still leaving lanes for drivered cars.
And driverless cars don't need side-view mirrors so you could probably stick a bike lane in there too.
DougM
I suspect that the line between buses and taxis will simply blur. Generally we define a bus as something that follows a fixed route and a taxi as something that will take you from point to point. Right now you can get some airport shuttles that will pick you up at your house and most taxis will allow you to share a ride with someone who has a slightly different destination.
But for me one of the most important groups of drivers are commuters. They are a huge bunch who all pile onto the roads twice a day at roughly the same two times. Then their cars sit and do nothing for most of the remainder of their existence. When people talk about driverless cars reducing the need for ownership they are forgetting that the benefit of shared ownership is that the asset is kept busy for the maximum amount of time. But if every commuter switched to a cab then either there wouldn't be enough cabs or then a huge number cabs would end up only run twice a day and the fee for supporting such a large number of assets would be roughly in line with personal ownership.
Thus any solution that economically deals with consumers will be one of the dominant uses of driverless vehicles. I suspect that it will be through the use of mini-buses doing a carpool like car share. People will arrange for a pickup and a destination and then will allow the service to figure out the optimal grouping of passengers to minimise time and distance while servicing the maximum number of passengers. These same mini-buses could be of all kinds of sizes depending upon the areas being serviced and their use during the remainder of the day.
The above does not preclude normal transit services or normal taxi services but what it does do is to potentially service a huge percentage of drivers with a service that meets their critical needs of point to point service that is very reliable for the least amount of cost.
This last bit is critical as many people forgo public transit because most transit services are notoriously unreliable or not conveniently structured and this could cost many people their jobs. So they grab their expensive chunk of metal and drive it alone to work.
Years ago I took a bus to work and it was a nightmare. It was only that my work was judged on productivity not arriving at a set time that I could do this. Quite simply the bus would often strand me with a 40 minute walk after taking 30 minutes to get me to that point. Yet in my general area there were about 6 of us going to that one company alone. This was a business park and I suspect that within a 5 minute drive of my place that there were hundreds all going to the business park. Not enough for a regular hourly bus run but ideal for some sort of car pooling system. It was only that we were incompetent boobs that we could never quite structure an effective car pool. Also the lack of a fixed start time made it even harder. But a computer run system should be able to work just fine.
So the key is to not look at this from a moving people around point of view but by asking what are people's priorities. For most I suspect that on time all the time is critical for a transit system and that the cost merely has to stay below operating a personal vehicle. But for ever little bit of unreliability in the system there will be a massive exodus as the cost of being fired will wildly outweigh the cost of a personal vehicle.
That is a microeconomic consideration but there is also a macroeconomic consideration; this is how a highly functional low cost public transit system can vastly reduce many costs and improve the economics of a city. If people aren't having to buy cars and are spending less time in traffic or on an inefficient transit system there will be more money available for local economics and higher local productivity. Plus fewer cars on the road can translate to a smaller roads budget which ideally either means more public spending on good things (parks etc) or lower taxes. Also many businesses require timely delivery of goods and thus many bu
Bus/car taxi/hybrid. Doesn't matter much. That's just an argument about degree.
The real landscape-changer will be the disappearance of public-transport trains and their associated hugely expensive tracks, bridges, tunnels and stations.
...Silicon Valley just aint gonna come up with feasible solutions to urban and suburban transport problems. I don't know why the press are asking them about everything outside their domains of expertise. Why not ask some experts on the subject instead? You know, people who actually know what they're talking about.
Cars are not mass transit; they take too much space and are individualized. Even if they are shared they are still a waste. If you can spend the $ then I can see why so many people prefer them.
Computer managed systems will make smart hybrid solutions possible in ways people apparently are not thinking about. I bet simulations can show their benefits already.
Quite simple: high traffic areas and locations will use bus and cars will handle low volume. Beyond that you have extremely high volume areas that are predictable where subways and trains make the most sense and the TRANSFER between methods. You don't need a local station anymore - bus stops can be figured by how many people need to meet up with the taxis and seamlessly TRANSFER. As long as you combine all 3 methods of transportation and automate the group you can save a lot by shifting the whole system to meet demand at the minimum cost. Everybody putting in their destinations into a smart phone with wireless pay/transfer means you just follow directions when to get on/off the auto along with any GPS you may need when outside the system... could even tie it into walking and bikes so the bus adjusts it's route to make it easier to catch you rather than you missing your stop.
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With an automate, you'd have an alarm/emergency stop button. Push it to brake and get a radio to a human. Peer pressure avoids abuse.
Right after everyone has a flying car in their garage.
If you think the EU workers unions are going to let you put a single bus driver out of work you are drunk and on drugs. And if all you were going to do anyway was a net change of zero in the number of vehicles on the road PLUS eliminate the travel on demand aspects then you might be functionally retarded.
40 cars are not equal to one bus, because not everyone are going from single point A to single point B. 40 cars go from points A1,A2..A40 to points B1,B2..B40, but those unfortunate bus riders have to use several buses and wait for each bus to reach their Bs and get back to their As. And if you have to serve people at least 80% good as cars you much more than one bus. And of couse nobody does that and that's why public transportation sucks. Just an example: Moscow, Russia. Heavy public transportation, a lot of buses, trolleybuses and a huge subway system, often advertised as "transportation solution". Yet I had to buy a car 14 years ago, because commuting from my parent's home to work took about 15 minutes in car and an hour and a half on public transportation -- a bus to subway, subway, change line, subway, bus. A lot of time wasted in hot weather or freezing snow, waiting, waiting, waiting...