A Transit Advocate’s Case for Autonomous Vehicles
How to Use New Tech Without Repeating Old Mistakes
In the United States, someone dies in a car crash every 12.5 minutes. That’s the equivalent of a fully loaded Airbus A220 crashing every single day, or wiping out a city the size of Rancho Palos Verdes, CA every year.
The main cause? Humans. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 94% of crashes are due to human error. I, like many others, have long advocated for safer street design and better road policies. And while those efforts can reduce fatalities, we’ll never reach zero deaths as long as humans are behind the wheel.
Enter autonomous vehicles, a technology pitched as the solution to that problem. Regardless of how I feel about cars in general or AVs specifically, this tech is here. Waymo alone has already completed over 10 million rides. It’s moving forward whether we like it or not.
Personally, I’ve found the debate around AVs frustrating. I once worked for a firm that consulted on autonomous vehicles and thought the whole thing was premature; no one really knows how this plays out. But instead of dismissing it entirely, I’ve shifted focus: not on whether AVs should exist, but on how we can shape them to deliver good outcomes.
Because without direction, the future we’re building won’t just fall short, it’ll repeat the mistakes of the past. Here’s what I hope autonomous vehicles could become. The alternative? Uninspired. Regressive. And not worth the hype.
It’s Exclusively Shared (Not Owned by the User)
If AVs are going to be an alternative to the congestion and inefficiency caused by car dependency, especially in places without strong transit, they need to be shared. Think of it like a monthly car subscription: you hail a vehicle on demand, use it for your trips, and it goes on to serve someone else.
In this model, cars are active throughout the day, not parked for 95% of it. They drop you off at work, then head to their next rider. At night or during downtime, they return to centralized yards for cleaning, charging, or maintenance.
My proposal: You subscribe to a company like Toyota. For a flat monthly or mileage-based fee, you can request different types of vehicles depending on your needs, for commutes, errands, or appointments, all through an app. The car picks you up, drops you off, and moves on to the next ride.
Second-order effects:
Cuts demand for curbside and surface parking
Eliminates idling AVs that currently linger like Waymos often do
Reduces total car volume on roads and in driveways
Reduces drinking and driving
It Should be Accessible and Safe.
It’s no secret: if you can’t drive in the United States, your mobility is severely limited. For many, especially seniors and people with disabilities, that’s already a daily reality.
According to the National Aging and Disability Transportation Center:
74% of older adults and 71% of younger adults with disabilities are already cutting back on driving.
42% of older adults and 56% of younger adults with disabilities expect a time when they won’t be able to drive.
68% of older adults and 79% of younger adults with disabilities say finding alternative transportation will be difficult.
For those without caregivers, those numbers rise to 73% and 77%, respectively.
Nearly 58% of today’s seniors live in neighborhoods not served by transit. That means getting to a doctor’s appointment, the grocery store, or even just meeting a friend for coffee can become an overwhelming challenge.
Take a look at the street my grandfather used to walk on to get a coffee:
Autonomous vehicles have the potential to offer these populations a lifeline, a way to move through the world with greater ease, independence, and dignity. If designed with accessibility in mind, AVs could allow users to bring assistive equipment and travel without needing a caregiver to drive if retrofitted as such.
Second-order effects:
Reduces the burden on caregivers
Reduces isolation among seniors and people with disabilities
It Should Support Transit
Autonomous vehicles should not replace fixed-route transit, and they can’t match the efficiency of systems like the Long Island Rail Road, especially when it comes to geometry and capacity. But they can complement transit in areas where land use is poor or traditional service falls short.
In places like many Virginia rail stations, where walkability and density are lacking, there's a clear opportunity for point-to-point autonomous shuttles that feed into the larger transit network. These vehicles could bridge the gap during off-peak hours or at night, when transit service winds down, offering a reliable alternative to driving.
AVs should function as first-and-last-mile solutions in suburban areas or places with inadequate transit, not as a replacement for it.
It Should Power Other Modes
While it's a controversial topic, automating transit, especially fixed-guideway systems, should be a goal for every agency. Labor makes up the bulk of operating costs, and automation offers a way to lower those costs while expanding service.
We may not see fully automated buses shortly, but bus rapid transit (BRT) systems with dedicated lanes or fully grade-separated routes are logical starting points for automation. These controlled environments are ideal for testing and scaling the technology.
Here’s the key idea: We shouldn’t allow automation to be used exclusively for personal vehicles. If we’re embracing this technology, we should also apply it to public transportation: trains, buses, and even street-cleaning vehicles. If it can improve service, reduce costs, and make cities function better, we should be all in.
The Future without the Past
America’s rail technology is stuck in the mid-20th century. Most of our transit systems survive on the capital investments made decades ago. Many major cities have no passenger trains at all, our so-called “high-speed rail” covers only a few dozen miles, and pedestrian deaths keep climbing as we double down on car dependency.
Rather than reject new technology simply because we haven’t gotten the basics right, transit advocates should bring their demands to the table, not end up on the menu. If autonomous vehicles are inevitable, then we should be shaping their future, not sitting on the sidelines hoping for a different one.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214140525000027#:~:text=Using%20a%20large%20nationally%20representative,in%20the%20past%2030%20days.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-national-poll-inability-to-drive-lack-of-transportation-options-are-major-concerns-for-older-adults-people-with-disabilities-and-caregivers-300761774.html
My prediction is that robotaxis will continue to expand, but their prices will be similar to human-driven taxis, which is too expensive to replace personal car ownership in any significant numbers.
What I think is more likely to happen will be the pessimistic view, where everyone continues to own their own cars, but the cars start getting autonomous driving capability. Thus, a parent taking a kid to school no longer has to physically ride with the kid in the car, and anyone driving somewhere where it is expensive to car can just have the car drop them off and drive back empty to the driveway back home. The convenience of being able to do this sounds great at first glance, but in aggregate, it will lead to a lot of extra cars on the road, many of which having zero people on board. From a transit perspective. It may eventually force cities to start embracing congestion pricing to avoid total gridlock. And, of course, dedicated lanes will become even more important for transit to be a viable alternative.
(And, no, mass autonomous vehicles will not magically solve traffic congestion, as the space taken up by a car on the road does not magically get smaller as a result of automation, and whatever traffic flow improvements are realized by robots merging more effectively than humans will be quickly offset by ever more cars on the road).
Waymo is operating commercially, so I don't think I see a lot of reasons for not getting first major commercial deployment of driverless buses somewhere very, very soon.