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Comment by jfim | Hacker News Reader

The answer is, whenever there's enough money to be made there to support a self driving company's expenses to develop and operate it. These programs cost billions to develop, and public transit is likely not a profitable market niche at the moment.

Also keep in mind that the driver also is responsible for handling fare evasion and ensuring the passengers stay at least somewhat ruly, which a self driving vehicle might not be able to do.

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Public transit is a public service. It should not be expected to turn a profit in order to justify its existence. The value it generates is the removal of friction all throughout the system as people—especially people with low or no income—are enabled to get from place to place to better their lives.

I totally agree with you that the services shouldn't be expected to turn a profit but the money for developing autonomous buses still needs to come from somewhere.

What if you could have 2x or Nx the services for the same public expenditure if you didn't have to pay drivers? How important is PT really? Should we cut pensions or cancer care to enable more PT? How hard-core are you about this? What I am getting at is that the economics of "good things" still matters and entails tradeoffs and value judgements.

What is your weighting of the value of PT as a jobs program vs a way to help people get around? Do we have the perfect amount of PT now, or should we have more, or less?

Personally I think "safety issues" will prove to be the sticking point with autonomy of PT but maybe it scales.

I am pro automation but skeptical about social issues.

To rob a self driving bus you put a cone on front of it, try that with a bus driver

Yes. The difficult problem is "antisocial behaviour". Also, to be fair, we might call them people who happen to be experiencing mental health incidents.

What are you going to rob? There's no money.

Most PT systems recover hardly anything from fares, the fares are a proxy for "are you a functional person". Would you return a shopping cart?

You can't make the bus or tram (at scale) fully autonomous for safety reasons. Societal trust isn't high enough. When you have a situation where there is a vulnerable lone woman or child victimised the situation will be politically unacceptable. Maybe AI surveillance and targeted enforcement can paper over this.

If you need guard labour though I suppose they can be more effective if they don't have to drive.

Subways is partially autonomous in many parts of the world, including Paris where people are particularly unruly.

Fair. Pay attention though to the safety systems in place and the cost of those versus drivers. I suppose in the end these are hypotheses about human behaviour in specific situations and we will find out who is right in due course.

People are pretty great and I will be happy to be proven wrong.

> Most PT systems recover hardly anything from fares

That is just factually wrong. For example, Zürich operating bus, trams and fares costs about 1.3 billion $. And it takes in 65.3 % in fares. I checked a few others and around 60% seems to be quite normal. I wouldn't call that 'hardly anything'.

And if all it takes a cone falling over and rolling over to stop a tram with 200 people in it, we are in a really dumb situation.

Gaining access to a bus is pretty easy

Here in Northern Ireland bus hijackings are relatively common. If you want to block a road during a riot then a great way to do it is to park a bus sideways and set it on fire. I've never heard of a driver putting up a fight against someone who was determined to take the bus.

WERE relatively common in NI in the 1970s and 1980s. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-66298630

While it's true that they were more common in those days I think it's still fair to say they're common RELATIVE to other regions. There were at least 3 buses hijacked during the Brexit related riots of 2021, for example, while a quick search suggests there hasn't been a single incident in The Netherlands in almost 50 years.

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