My question is can there be public self-driving buses, cars, mini-buses -- that stop less are more direct and communicate to manage traffic?
And rail transit is a whole other beast. Do you know how much higher a volume of people can be carried by a subway than by even the most efficient bus route running buses bumper-to-bumper (let alone private vehicles)? (The unwillingness of politicians to acknowledge this is one of the reasons the L train shutdown in Brooklyn next year is going to be such a shit show.)
If for instance people in a given community want to start traveling to a different part of a city they either have to create new rail routes or people have to take long inconvenient trips.
Ha! Apparently you haven't used Northern in the UK. Nice! (chuckle)
I don't think it's really about nicety, but about capacity.
A subway train can carry up to 1'000 passengers, depending on length and construction. You can have frequencies of a train every 90 seconds (example: line C in Prague, during rush hour). So you can transport up to 40'000 people per hour in each direction.
Buses, while certainly much better than private vehicles, can never match that capacity. Alas, they're much cheaper and certainly more flexible.
True, but not very useful. The #1 Bus line in Boston takes a route that a trolley once took. And before that it was a horse drawn railcar. And before that it was a 10 seat omnibus carriage route. Same route for a mighty long time.
Perhaps there's not a lot of overlap between people who take Uber a lot and people who willingly step into a bus of any kind.