Sounds way less efficient than just building a train.
The great thing about robo-taxis is that they don't actually solve a problem. If I showed somebody two images of inner city traffic jams, they wouldn't be able to tell me which is humans driving gas engine'd cars, and which is self driving electric vehicles.
The city with self-driving cars will economically outperform the city with human-driven gas cars.
Just like America economically outperforms Europe. The best and brightest from Europe/cities with manual human drivers will leave their dying cities behind and move to the futuristic, inspiring, and highly-compensating self-driving car city/America.
Europeans are upset that America is getting away with treating the underprivileged so poorly, yet America constantly outperforms Europe $-wise. And yes, everything in life is about $.
They absolutely solve problems. They just don't solve the one particular problem you mentioned. For example, they solve the problem that cities don't have enough parking spaces.
Solving the above problems plus being on-demand and door to door is a huge benefit.
Just get rid of traffic jams and 9 lane highways, and diesel emissions.
Trains would actually sort a great deal if the network is wide enough and frequent enough.
You can, but can everyone else? I see quite a few disabled, seniors and pregnant people on trains. Not to mention people who are exhausted from their day.
I saw plenty of disabled and elderly and they all were able to take the buses and trains, and they used a cab for the last mile.
In contrast in the US, we don't have the transit at all, unless you live in a city like NYC, we just use cars everywhere.
Agreed, we should be making it easier and more convenient to take mass transit instead of driving. If improving last mile transit options beyond walking/biking helps to get more people out of cars and onto trains, that's a good thing. We just need to make sure we build enough mass transit to support that use case.
On the other hand, at least making some of these driverless buses or common-destination carpool shuttles would be more efficient over any span than single-passenger coupes.