That's like asking why do cars and roads exist at all when everyone can just use public transit.
The answer is that people want cars. They want to drive. They want to be taken directly from point A to point B without needing to walk to transit stops and switch buses/trains and face unpredictable schedules and delays.
Autonomous road infrastructure is a sensible, incremental improvement. And in fact city buses will tend to benefit from it the most.
Ok so your problem with fixed infrastructure is that it is fixed, and your solution is to create a slightly different fixed infrastructe that has many of the same problems, but instead its more expensive, less tested, less safe and less efficent?
> The answer is that people want cars.
Actually in many cities in the world, only a minor % of people own a car. And even those that do own a car don't use if for that many trips.
> They want to drive.
Driving in cities is almost universally hated and is proven to cause lots of stress.
> and face unpredictable schedules and delays.
Because in cars its impossible to have unpredictable delays, roads are always completely open and there is never any concention?
In most cities in the world, public transport has less unpredictable delays compared to driving.
> Autonomous road infrastructure is a sensible, incremental improvement. And in fact city buses will tend to benefit from it the most.
A sensible incredmental improvment are regular bus lanes with regular trolley buses.
I almost agree. I'd say people want the most convenient thing. We can see people do not want to drive by the fact people who owns cars take public transit, or take the high speed train when driving is an option.
How are you going to keep me in my non-autonomous car out of your special "autonomous only and also maybe busses" lane?
EDIT: and yes, it's a completely reasonable question to ask why invest in special new kinds of roads when more people would be better served by public transit.
Those things are easy to detect. It's much less easy to prevent a simple lane change. Some cities have "bus only" lanes, which cars use anyway, but it's easy to detect them since they don't look like busses. How are you going to detect that my car isn't autonomous?
These are pointless concerns. It is a technically trivial problem. We are literally in a thread about self driving cars. If there is a will to enforce it then it will be enforced.
That's what I'm trying to get at--why would there be any will? Why should we all decide to give up a lane to people who are rich (or stupid) enough to buy a brand new car?
The answer is that people want cars. They want to drive. They want to be taken directly from point A to point B without needing to walk to transit stops and switch buses/trains and face unpredictable schedules and delays.
Autonomous road infrastructure is a sensible, incremental improvement. And in fact city buses will tend to benefit from it the most.