Road design, transportation and walkability

[tomh009]

Are you envisioning a scheduled, shared service, or an on-demand service?

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.