Are you trying to say that these people wouldn't already exist without the bus? So everytime we commission a new bus, 3 fully grown licensed drivers appear in a flash of smoke from the storage compartment of the bus?
No. They would be doing other productive things. But right now, they have to spend their productive power on driving buses.
This is simply a huge waste of human potential.
Car commutes are shorter than transit commutes in well-designed cities.
But even otherwise, you don't need a dedicated full-time driver.
First, you want to solve the problem of long bus intervals. It's still not economic to just buy more buses because they require a lot of power to run and do tons of road damage.
But you can make buses smaller! And by making them smaller, you can run them faster without incurring a lot of useless overhead.
Heck, you can just idle, dare I say _park_, these unused small buses when there is no demand. And since it's so easy to manage the fleet this way, you can make personalized buses for every passenger.
Hmm... It really reminds me of something...
If we're talking about planning, then we should look at least 10 years ahead. By that time, most of new vehicles are going to be EVs.
Mind you, the subway construction around here is planned 20 _years_ in advance. All the current proposed projects are going to be finished some time in 2040-s.
> If you choose EVs for the cars, why not choose ZEV buses that are starting to enter the market as well?
ZEV buses still retain the most polluting part of regular buses: the driver.
> What? I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say here.
One average US citizen produces around 20 tons of CO2 per year. A bus needs 3 of them working full-time. This completely dwarfs the emissions due to fuel use.
> It doesn't destroy affordable housing, though, it shifts it to other areas while increasing density near stations.
Bullshit. New density does NOT create ANY affordable housing. Never has, never will. And dense housing near stations is certainly not cheap.
Heck, here's an article from urbanists that admits that: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/4/26/upzoning-might...
> Most urban planners and economists would say that increased density is a good thing and that Tokyo is an excellent example of a city done right.
Most oil executives say that oil is great and that the large trucks are good!
Tokyo is a great example of young people forced to live in "microapartments" while just a couple of hours away, beautiful old houses sit empty.
> You seem to have a personal bone to pick with high-density cities that's just not shared by most other people.
Most other people haven't heard ANY opposing opinion in their lives. And neither have they researched it themselves. Thus, I routinely hear utterly risible nonsense like "we need more density to allow affordable housing" going unopposed.