[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Hatman

My question is who will own the autonomous cars in this scenario? Will transit agencies be allowed to own fleets of personal autonomous cars to accommodate its passengers, or will that duty be assigned to private taxi firms, requiring passengers to pay transit fares and taxi fares as well?

What will be the dividing line between a taxi and mass transit?

Within the U.S. context, I'm expecting auto-cabs to be private, because it will be damn easy to make money off them. Transit systems, in contrast, will likely retrench towards a core of service on things like rail and BRT. Low-usage neighborhood bus lines will be replaced by auto-cabs, which in some sense will be a win-win for the transit agencies, as it means only the high volume lines with the most farebox recovery will continue operation.

Originally Posted by Hatman

Supposing people continue to own their own cars... which I think is likely, as people will still consider the car their 'personal space,' and want it to be always ready in their garage, rather than ready to pick them up via app... So, supposing people own these cars, they will only need to own one car. Autonomous cars will be more expensive to purchase than non-autonomous ones (not counting insurance), but one autonomous car will be cheaper than two non-autonomous. So, instead of the family provider driving to work and letting the car sit in a parking lot all day, instead he goes to work and then sends the car back home for the rest of the family to use. But what if his/her work is really far away? Then the car takes him to the transit stop, drops him/her off, then goes back for the family (taking kids to school and running errands and the like).

I think car ownership will depend greatly upon where you live in the future. In cities I think it's going to fall through the floor, as the economics of keeping a car when you already use mass transit to get to work cease making sense. Uber can right now, with human drivers, get cars to you within five minutes in most cities too, so it's not like waiting for an auto-drive should be that inconvenient. In terms of basic economics, one will probably have to drive quite a bit before owning an autonomous vehicle is cheaper than renting one. Still, I do presume car ownership will remain the norm in suburban areas for some time to come.

Originally Posted by Hatman

and this one is the biggest of all: No more Parking lots in dense urban areas! None! We won't need them, as cars will drop off their passengers and then go find parking away from the urban core, or go back home altogether (with distance-based pricing, I wouldn't bet so much on returning home). This means urban cores can get very dense, which translates almost directly to very walkable, which is exactly the conditions in which transit operates the best.

Sadly, the first things which will likely go under are parking garages, not lots, since they have the most overhead and highest cost, and the cars can presumably calculate if the gas is worth being expended to go x miles further for free parking. While parking garages could then be redeveloped to better use, it would be better if the surface lots (which will probably hold on a bit longer) died out first.

Originally Posted by Hatman

Autonomous cars are still cars, after all, and all cars, no matter what they are, come with capacity issues. Make them smaller, make them able to travel in platoons, make them able to operate without lanes, ect - they are still cars. They will increase the capacity of freeways and roads dramatically, but in urban areas they will still eventually reach their limit and have traffic jams.
Transit isn't going anywhere - in fact, I believe it's about to get a huge boost in ridership and utility.

Imagine the huge queues of auto-drive cars trying to line up outside of a commercial skyscraper at 5PM and you can see why they can realistically never become a replacement for mass transit. They will change cities tremendously, but they are only part of the story.