Could driverless cars make vehicle ferries redundant?

[The exile]

More to the point, how many such hypothetical journeys start and end close to two bus stops served by same bus? The need to change buses would swing the convenience factor solidly towards on demand driverless cars.

And swing back again as “on demand” rapidly becomes “as soon as one’s available” (ie in three quarters of an hour if you’re lucky).

 

[gg1]

And swing back again as “on demand” rapidly becomes “as soon as one’s available” (ie in three quarters of an hour if you’re lucky).

Only if you're in the habit of deciding on the spur of the moment you need to leave immediately. Realistically most people would book at least an hour or two beforehand, I've never known an Uber (the closest comparable business model to a hypothetical driverless car system) arrive more than 5-10 minutes late under those circumstances.

Of course there is the occasional extreme example where you could have a prolonged wait, but the same applies to buses.

 

[The exile]

Only if you're in the habit of deciding on the spur of the moment you need to leave immediately. Realistically most people would book at least an hour or two beforehand, I've never known an Uber (the closest comparable business model to a hypothetical driverless car system) arrive more than 5-10 minutes late under those circumstances.

Of course there is the occasional extreme example where you could have a prolonged wait, but the same applies to buses.

Assuming you’re in an urban area, booking an hour or two beforehand suddenly makes a dense network of mass transit vehicles running to a known schedule (even at 30 minute intervals) look very attractive.
How long does your pre-booked pod wait if your meeting /shopping /whatever it happens to be takes longer than expected? What happens at standard finish times when 50 people (or even 5000) have all pre-booked a vehicle and don’t conveniently present themselves in the same order that the pods arrive?