Autonomy could improve responsiveness to demand but you still run into other issues. DRT usually won't be able to take advantage of things proven to make buses faster and more consistent (bus lanes, reducing stop count, transit priority signals). Futher, consistency and response times gained by dynamic routing can easily be overshadowed by increased variability in trip time as the route adjusts to add new passengers or make out of the way drop-offs.
As an example, all throughout the Eastern Caribbean this system works really well (in my experience better than most centrally planned bus systems in large cities). On any given island you can go to any main road and within a few minutes a minibus will come along. Most of the time if your aren't familiar with the geography, you just tell the conductor where you are trying to get to, and they will make sure that you get off in the right spot to get where you are going or connect to another minibus. Typical cost was ~$2.
Predictability was pretty low, but because of the small size of busses, there were a lot of them roaming around, I don't think I ever waited more than 15 minutes, and that was in very out of the way places.
The GP was arguing that it NEVER works out, and I'm just pointing out that it does work in many places.
I would much rather rely on the Caribbean minibus systems than try to rely on transit in cities like Phoenix.
How do scheduled bus routes standardize a journey time vs a demand shuttle?
> out of the way journeys in my experience.
How do buses fair in this regard?
> It's really not ideal
Are buses?
Has it? When, where and with what technology?
> Predictability is really important and ridership drops as soon as users start having to plan too far ahead
Uber etc have proven this to be patently false. Existing buses are experiencing dropping ridership - Uber is not.
> won't be able to take advantage of things proven to make buses faster and more consistent
You're replacing buses with auto-shuttles. Just let the shuttles use the bus lanes.
> bus lanes, reducing stop count, transit priority signals
All of these are usable if you widen the scope to include auto-shuttles.
> consistency and response times gained by dynamic routing can easily be overshadowed by increased variability
What is the difference between Busing and Shuttles here? A bus user can keep yanking the stop cord, there can be 1 or 2 disabled passengers who take several minutes to board, there can be 50 children getting on / off. These issues are constants and all are improved with demand based shuttles.
The app would say - meet here.
> One might call such a meeting point a “bus stop” :)
Call it what you want, it could be in a strip mall parking lot, a convenient corner or just in front of the apartment building. Optimized for traveling distance between the passengers.
You can't just have buses stopping randomly everywhere, it doesn't scale.
This is based on the observation that people, including police, tolerate taxi drivers stopping at places where it's technically illegal.