Or it'll encourage people to live in a more dense area, if society no longer subsides the driving lifestyle.

There are plenty of area that could support mass transit, especially in cities.

Even suburbia can be made more walkable.

For example, walking to my local gas station isn't really that practical due to a lack of continuous sidewalks. It isn't that far but the path to the gas station can get pretty muddy at time.

I once tried to get food at a fast food joint by walking, the lack of sidewalks is even more acute. Crossing several lanes of road felt pretty unsafe even when the traffic light is red.

HAH that is one of the most ridiculous excuses... and is also directly refuted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ

^^ "Not Just Bikes"

I have ridden commuter rail, aubways, and busses in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Amsterdam, London, Vienna and other places.

While you have a point that "lo-density" is an oversimplification, only New York has the kind of density and frequency of service that make public transit really usable. Boston commuter rail sucks pretty bad, with a too-sparse schedule. BART from SFO to the city is OK but around town there are too few lines and stops. This all could be fixed, but the fact is they suck compared to cities like Amsterdam where cycling has the infrastructure and the critical mass to be safe (unlike London, for example).

That's one ideal, sure. I don't see it though -- who's going to keep all these individual driving pods clean? How is access going to be gated to them? SF is a dense city, only New York has higher population density. Its BART and muni and bus service isn't bad, either -- and partly because it's such a pain to drive downtown, it gets used, and being used keeps it safe.

This is a story about San Francisco. SF has plenty of density for human driven buses to be better for the environment.

AVs are not currently competing with human drivers in the use-case you say they'd be best at, they're clogging already dense cities with even more cars.