Strongly agree. The future is what we used to call "share autos" in India. It's a small vehicle that can transport some 6-8 people. Currently these aren't feasible for the public because driver operational cost dominates, but once driver operational cost is near zero, we can bring much more public transit online. One of these vehicles is 4x-8x as dense as a car, and with America's relative lack of density, it's the only realistic way to have widespread public transit.
Particularly useful with dynamic dispatch and dynamic routing is that the vehicle's stopping can be much more infrequent, leading to lower total trip time and greater frequency. San Francisco is very dense but is also very old, so large 40-60 person busses stop every block forcing low throughput high latency rides. As a consequence, I prefer an e-bike over a bus everywhere in SF.
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Strongly agree. The future is what we used to call "share autos" in India. It's a small vehicle that can transport some 6-8 people. Currently these aren't feasible for the public because driver operational cost dominates, but once driver operational cost is near zero, we can bring much more public transit online. One of these vehicles is 4x-8x as dense as a car, and with America's relative lack of density, it's the only realistic way to have widespread public transit.
Particularly useful with dynamic dispatch and dynamic routing is that the vehicle's stopping can be much more infrequent, leading to lower total trip time and greater frequency. San Francisco is very dense but is also very old, so large 40-60 person busses stop every block forcing low throughput high latency rides. As a consequence, I prefer an e-bike over a bus everywhere in SF.