I'd think self driving cars would kill busses. I'd much rather nap / work / watch TV / do hobbies in my car (where I'd keep stuff for doing all that), then in a bus.

If the car is electric, it isn't so bad on the environment, and it can park itself in a no humans allowed garage (so little chance for breakins). As for rush hour, I'd hope swarm scheduling lowers congestion substantially (though this and making longer commutes tolerable really just means I'll live further from work).

Lol, that is highly unrealistic. Where is this magical secure garage going to come from? Underground parking costs $40k per spot to build, above ground is similar. Add in the cost of security and the long term costs of parking are extremely high. The parking minimums in most places force parking to be heavily subsidized, which isn't a sustainable model when it comes to long term matienece of suburban areas, unless we can heavily increase taxes to pay (5x to 6x) for road, water, sewer, and all other maintenance needed.

Self-driving cars will replace buses? And who, pray tell, will pay for expanding our roadways?

http://john-s-allen.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/muen...

> high bandwidth vehicles will do the bulk of the work, and seamlessly trade off to "last mile" self driving small vehicles.

Still doesn't solve the problem - just moves it. If everyone in my office complex needs a ride to the bus around 5pm, and everyone at the other end of the bus line needs a ride home at 5:42pm when the bus arrives in SuburbTown, there will still be unmanageable shortages of self driving small vehicles - unless you own your own.

You can fit 4 people in a self driving car pretty easily. Most people currently drive by themselves because it's too difficult to arrange on-demand carpools on your way to/from work.

Space on the road is the limiting factor in this scenario, not number of vehicles. What would the point be of making another vehicle available, if traffic is bumper to bumper all the way?

> In a self driving world, peak traffic will be served by buses

Huh? If suburban Americans aren't opting to share rides into work now and don't have or want bus services now, particularly not connecting bus services, what difference is non-human drivers going to make?

>what difference is non-human drivers going to make?

That's really the key point. Not that roboTaxis are on the near horizon but, if you believe they'll change everything when they arrive, you basically need to point to all the cases that today are almost (but not quite) enabled by Ubers driven by minimum wage drivers.

Do Zipcar and Uber make a difference on the margins? Sure. I know people in fairly dense non-NYC urban area that probably would still have ended up with a car 10 years ago who can get by without one today. But there's a big difference between change at the margins and fundamental shifts.

seamlessly?