Originally Posted by tandempower

True, but my hope is that autonomous vehicle sharing will liberate a lot more people to do a lot more walking instead of toting and parking their personal cars everywhere they go because what else can they do, leave it? Currently there are only two options for car-owners: 1) leave it at home or 2) bring it with you wherever you go until you park it at home.

My thought in terms of passenger rail is that autonomous vehicles would basically be rail vehicles where the rails could just be painted on the road instead of built. These would be fixed routes similar to buses; and there could also be buses on routes with enough demand for seats. The business model would be similar to rental car agencies that have a lot of cars in stock, but instead of checking them out like library books, they would just drive along fixed routes continuously like buses.

It would basically just be a way to increase the frequency of bus service and add new routes and extend schedules without the local transit authority having to buy more buses, hire more drivers, etc.