Technology

I'm team Waymo. They seem to be the leaders and to be following a path I most agree with. Basically and taxi model like uber except Waymo owns the cars.

I still follow /r/waymo and /r/selfdrivingcars on reddit if you fancy reading more.

Currently people drive all the way to the destination and all the way back. If taxis funnelled them to trains that is a huge improvement if nothing else. And like you say parking gets freed up and that land can be used for more density, more parks and more cycling without losing roads then all good. (Roads should be reduced I'm just saying politically it will be easier to turn an unused carpark into a park than to turn a road into a park).

It terms of cost. I think that will be a huge boom for the economy. High milage, electric cars fueled by cheap renewables is going to make upfront costs non existent and lower per milage costs. That will increase riders verses personal cars.

Then I think that will cause a higher density per car. Ride sharing with uber works but it isn't great. The more people that use it the higher likelihood you have of people going to the same area so the time cost of ride sharing will decrease as usage increases. The UK actually experimented with on demand buses (Demand Responsive Transport) which I really liked but the uptake hasn't been as good as hoped. Think this will be more common.

All these factors I believe will make walking/cycling/ trains safer and more accessible and allow for more infrastructure and better cost per rider.

But it can't be the end-state. We should still be working towards denser, walkable, living spaces. I don't want to continue with the idea that the suburbs are ok.

I agree but the political will isn't there. Getting rid of parking and a lane here or there is achievable on the current trajectory. Once that's done, I hope more change like you mention comes.

But it's also the built it and they will come factor. Who wants more cyclists? People that cycle. If the self driving car makes more cyclist more people will want more cycling. I'm really hoping for a self feeding cycle grown from the self driving car.