Have you never had the experience of being on a crawling train and counting the minutes after the meeting you were supposed to be at has already started?
That said, I suppose there's every reason to think traffic impacts of self-driving cars (more cars circling, waiting for passengers) would make traffic slower and more unpredictable.
Edit: And, of course, the people in the non-self-driving cars would get the slowness without any direct benefit to themselves.
Besides, in the hypothetical self-driving future the transit times will likely be far more predictable than it is today... with AI running and optimizing everything.
Being able to videoconference during my commute would be an enormous boon.
(No, but more seriously: I'm a bit envious that this is working for your teams. It's completely impractical in the East Coast US cities I've frequented).
If your transit system is underground without repeaters though, I agree that you're out of luck. I can't imagine trying to take a call on the T.
In suburbia/regional areas certainly, but most large cities are already heavily congested, how many more people could possibly fit in peak hours? As optimised as we can make it, there's still a predictable one-directional crush every day.
The real optimisation of roads would be incentivising companies to make their employees start/finish outside of work hours.
A self-driving future will likely still heavily involve public transport in the short term at least.
Hopefully fully autonomous vehicles will get far smaller, travelling pods which are both cheap to buy and maintain, much like a motorbike but without the downsides that turn most people off.
Smaller vehicles, especially trucks will quickly be needed to reduce road wear and offset the likely cost of greater road usage. Smaller personal transportation would also be a boon to road efficiency.
Selfing driving + fleet cars will most certainly reduce the average car size. People buy 4-5 seats for the edge cases when they might need to pick up some friends or more than one child at a time, or merely because it's the most common type of vehicle available, which people buy out of habit or whatever social reason.
But looking at car on any highway and you'll only find more then 1-2 drivers a minority of the time.
When we eliminate the need to buy a single car for all general use-cases, and have a high quantity of self-driving Uber style cars available, then 1-2 seater cars with become the most popular size. Which in itself with reduce climate damage and increase capacities on roads.
Especially as self-driving cars can drive at higher speeds and closer together, potentially linking up like trains for long-distance rides.
I take the bus every day to work even though in total it takes exactly twice as long than if I took my motorcycle? Why because I like to read on the bus. It's not actually important to me to get there any quicker. In fact on days I have earlier meetings I just leave my apartment earlier. I think the idea that people wouldn't mind going slower may be real for a lot of people.
I once had somebody pull this shtick for being late to a meeting. I put it in the same category as using "traffic" as an excuse. Disasters which make the news are acceptable. Routine inconveniences causing one delays are okay, once in a while, but never if treated as an immunity against criticism. One should have planned better, by leaving earlier or taking another mode of transportation. Then there are the characters who leave the office late and blame it on traffic every time.
But if your train is stuck in the middle of a tunnel for 3 hours because a crazy person ran onto the track and authorities are chasing them, that's a pretty fair excuse.
People who are idling all day to be available for meetings likely aren't part of a high-value organization.
Why would one be idling? The founders and executives who do well have a handle on their schedule. They avoid over-scheduling, keep thing short, show up on time and get shit done. At the larger scale, my friends at Google, Apple or Amazon don't run late for anything, be it a personal brunch or M&A negotiation. Properly functioning as an adult, and fixing problems over making excuses, is simply well internalized.
I hear in Germany if people aren't there when the meeting starts, it gets cancelled. It's definitely part of the culture.
What I never do however is get distracted by being angry while driving one ton of steel...