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Comment by lnsru | Hacker News Reader

Why I can’t see autonomous city bus companies. The speed is slow, route is rather short and predefined. April tags or UWB radio location beacons can be placed in cost efficient manner. Every city is screaming loud, that they can’t find enough drivers.

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We don't even see automated tram companies. The thing moves on rails, has a dedicated traffic light and in an event of accident the driver is never guilty (at least where I live).

I think what you're asking for is called "metro". Trams still have to share the infrastructure with cars and pedestrians, meaning all the downsides, with none of the upsides people funding autonomous transit find enticing.

I think that's mostly due to the fact that the small market size makes it not quite worth it. With something like self riving the development costs are huge so you better capture a sizeable market.

These do exists e.g. Nuremberg in Germany has an autonomous subway since 2013.

Lots of cities have these by now. The ones I'm aware of on top of my head are London, Copenhagen and Singapore. I'm sure there are many more.

The difference is probably that they don't have to interact with unknown factors (humans in cars).

There are tons of fully automated metros/subways (usually the prerequisites are grade separation and platform screen doors to minimise the risk of accidents). Multiple lines in Paris, the DLR in London, Copenhagen metro, ffs a line on the Sofia (in Bulgaria, the poorest country in the EU) metro.

Driving a bus is a tactically complicated job. The rules of the road in a major city are already a little soft. They are doubly so for buses. They park where they must, and sometimes use their size to bully their way in.

City buses will be the last to go automated.

I see often dedicated bus lanes around. And sometimes dedicated traffic lights for them. It’s difficult job, but that automatically brings the need for automation. I don’t know much people who want this low pay extremely high stress job. Some blue collar workers went for subway train driver’s career. It’s much easier.

That is (or can be) what's called bus rapid transit - basically build a train line but use busses.

They could probably be significantly automated, but I don't know that the cost would be worth it, as even the best ones still interact with normal traffic at times.

> Some blue collar workers went for subway train driver’s career. It’s much easier.

Shouldn't that be automated first?

I think it’s already automated when the line planing was good. However some places like Munich have terrible delays and all the strange things not allowing getting on time by subway.

Have you ever used buses ?

They have to slalom around badly parked cars, delivery vehicles, roadblocks, take alternative routes, &c. dozens of time per day

There's a street near my house where I've seen the driver get out and start knocking on doors to find the owner of a particular car ! It's a narrow windy road with unrestricted parking, the drivers do an amazing job given the circumstances.

Most trains aren't even automated yet. Of course there are many lines that are but the majority. Even boring subway lines not intercity.

I recently found out that all trains (metro) are automated!

> Of course there are many lines that are but the majority. Even boring subway lines not intercity.

Many subway lines are automated. It just turns out that it is not cost effective to move between Level 2 (driverless, but the driver operates the doors and drives the train if needed) and Level 4 (fully unattended).

This is because the cost of the driver is less than the cost of having the system be fully autonomous. The Victoria Line in London, for instance, has been automatically operated since 1968. The driver just opens and closes the doors, and handles any unexpected situations.

To be fair I imagine there's no push to do so since they require someone present regardless. If something does go wrong or very unusual happens you don't want to drive someone there with potential hundreds of passengers stranded or valuable cargo blocking an artery.

This. I won't believe in autonomous driving for consumer cars until I see a bus or truck that works with it first. They are much higher value (especially trucks), so, once it works, why not start there?

Let's not forget the passengers. When can you go, not go? What if someone gets in a fight? What if someone is sick? Can you recognize if someone is trying to flag you down?

Bit of a challenge to deal with them with software.

> The speed is slow, route is rather short and predefined.

Not so for buses that serve rural communities. Where I live (admittedly an edge case) there are free-roaming ponies and cows that randomly create unpredictable obstructions and collision hazards.

City buses are the same, but with free-roaming humans.

I kinda agree that buses, metro, trains, could be automated for the benefit of not having to find workers.

However, I do think the handful of jobs do still make a difference. I recently visited a country which has conductors in each tram (so a driver and a separate conductor who goes around selling/checking the tickets while it drives). Everything else in the country is pretty much modern, always-online, and the majority of people pay with their phones - yet I still found it nice to see those simple, cheap jobs not be automated away. I'd much rather hold my phone to a thing and say thanks when that thing is a human, it's much nicer for me.

We lose touch to others so much already, why automate away perfectly efficient jobs? I haven't been in a bus that was late because the bus driver messed up.

TL;DR: I'd much rather have things done by humans as long as the machines replacing them aren't much better. Those are people who rely on those jobs to survive, and I don't see a point in replacing them.

"TL;DR: I'd much rather have things done by humans as long as the machines replacing them aren't much better. Those are people who rely on those jobs to survive, and I don't see a point in replacing them."

I'd rather have universal basic income and a strong social safety net, so no one needs jobs to survive.

Automating away the jobs that people don't want to do is a step towards making that more economically feasible.

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