Absolutely — let's hope so. (Of course, there are plenty of public transport systems that could run automated but don't owing to regulations or unionization -- a relative of mine used to work as a driver on BART, which essentially involved reading and occasionally pressing a "deadman" button.)
You can easily imagine the cost of taxi service going down to the marginal cost of fuel and vehicle wear-and-tear, which would be far cheaper than private ownership. But I suggest that will ALSO vastly increase passenger miles. (It might yet reduce the carbon footprint of car manufacture.)
The biggest cost for driving is time (gas, etc., a distant second). Efficient taxis will lead to less car pooling, more trips (because they will be less expensive in money and time -- you can watch TV, read, or chat with friends while driving).
It's hard to see how this can possibly reduce passenger miles.
Also imagine the increase in drug abuse! Now a pub crawl can continue while driving, and on the way home.
Ok, this might break the "peak car" but I'm fine with increasing passenger miles as long as passenger-CO2 and passenger-congestion go down. A self-driving minibus that you can call like a taxi but share with other passengers is my equivalent of the flying car :-)
> I'm fine with increasing passenger miles as long as passenger-CO2 and passenger-congestion go down
Yes but the idea that people will opt for a minibus over an individual taxi when the cost is trivial is optimistic. The marginal cost for a trip is gas + maintenance. The way to drive down emissions is to make people pay for them.
One of the "advantages" of driverless is that passengers will likely become less sensitive to congestion (because they're reading or sleeping). It's again hard to image much effort going into reducing congestion if people are less likely to notice it.
I don't see how this scenario reduces emissions or congestion.
This why some people are so optimistic about Uber, seeing a future where there would be instant aws style provisioning of transportation, you could see car ownership going the way of physical server ownership, in that case.
Taking it one step farther, you can see a melding of plugable container ship style passenger interiors which could be routed very efficiently like network packets, leading to tremendous efficiency which would make car driving/mass transit seem quaint.
You can easily imagine the cost of taxi service going down to the marginal cost of fuel and vehicle wear-and-tear, which would be far cheaper than private ownership. But I suggest that will ALSO vastly increase passenger miles. (It might yet reduce the carbon footprint of car manufacture.)
The biggest cost for driving is time (gas, etc., a distant second). Efficient taxis will lead to less car pooling, more trips (because they will be less expensive in money and time -- you can watch TV, read, or chat with friends while driving).
It's hard to see how this can possibly reduce passenger miles.
Also imagine the increase in drug abuse! Now a pub crawl can continue while driving, and on the way home.