The cost of providing a bus exceeds the cost of operating a car in many cases, like lower population density neighborhoods. It may save the public money to centralize transit on major corridors and then subsidize trips on Waymo in some areas and at some times.
> cost of providing a bus exceeds the cost of operating a car in many cases
You can fit 40-50 people in your car?
how many people can fit in a bus compared to a car?
Doesn't matter if there's only four people willing to ride on a given schedule.
That is an argument for buses on well-designed routes and schedules, not an argument against buses.
It is like saying “that bus would be useless at the bottom of a lake”
well, yeah. The first step would be not driving it into a lake
It depends on the population density. You may have a perfectly well designed route for the area, but there are only so many people per hour that want to take a trip. You can delete routes and make people walk further, but that makes the trip take longer and not everyone can or wants to walk a long ways to the bus stop.
Different population densities have different optimal vehicle sizes. It's the same reason a small city airport might have one or two regional jets per day serving it instead of 2 747s per week.
Yep, you definitely want a range of bus sizes. Some areas are served perfectly well with a couple of these
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Minotour
"Centralize transit on major corridors" is about full buses. But transit agencies spend as much per hour on an empty bus as a full one. Transit agencies run empty buses on routes that are rarely full, and run vans and even microtransit that may just be a waste of money.
The OP you're responding suggested using Waymo's to help fill the buses, not get rid of buses.
I suggested both. Milk runs through suburban neighborhoods likely make sense to get rid of entirely.
Which are almost always fairly empty so the critic's comments about bus capacity is irrelevant.