I wonder if this might be a situation where autonomous vehicles could really solve a problem. Like if there were like 2 or 3 minivan size vehicles that you could summon to ferry you from your house to the nearest real bus stop. The vehicle would only have to go like 20 miles an hour to make it safe for pedestrians and be compellingly worthwhile to make people take the bus instead of drive
In smaller mexican cities instead of huge busses they have smaller 10 person vehicles that run every 15ish minutes. Terrible for the environment cause it’s more cars but better for public transit cause they’re consistent and come more often.
3 human drivers 24/7 would be too expensive. And suburb subdivisions are perfect for autonomous systems, it’s a very unchanging route with rarely any other people or cars on the road and the speed limit is already capped at a very low number
I wonder if this might be a situation where autonomous vehicles could really solve a problem. Like if there were like 2 or 3 minivan size vehicles that you could summon to ferry you from your house to the nearest real bus stop. The vehicle would only have to go like 20 miles an hour to make it safe for pedestrians and be compellingly worthwhile to make people take the bus instead of drive
In smaller mexican cities instead of huge busses they have smaller 10 person vehicles that run every 15ish minutes. Terrible for the environment cause it’s more cars but better for public transit cause they’re consistent and come more often.
Could just have a human driver. I think the impromptu routing would be the thing that works best for suburbs.
3 human drivers 24/7 would be too expensive. And suburb subdivisions are perfect for autonomous systems, it’s a very unchanging route with rarely any other people or cars on the road and the speed limit is already capped at a very low number
You want the shuttle available as completely as the bus.
In a given neighborhood there could be many hours only a few / no people need the shuttle. It would be hard to staff.
Be cooler to make a protected shuttle lane where the shuttle operates under very strict controlled parameters.
do that and make trips to or from a train stop half price to encourage using it as a last mile to funnel into a public transit system
who knows if when they will exist. if they exist they will probably work.
They already exist
https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/20/24006712/waymo-driverless-million-mile-safety-compare-human
In a few specific areas. None within 1000 miles of my city., the tech is promissing, but only time will tell how far it gets.
If you live where it exists then you should be asking questions. It seems like a dream answer.