I don't ride-share with Lyft because the per-ride cost is cheap enough for me -- but that's not true for everyone. No matter how cheap it is, there will always be people that want to pay less.
Plus, when cities are inundated with car-shares and institute congestion pricing, even if the car is cheap, the $20 congestion charge can be split among the riders.
A lot of low-income workers currently rely on informal ride-sharing schemes or shared taxis. They're not necessarily safe, reliable or legal, but they're very cheap and fill the gaps in official transit services.
Autonomous minibuses with AI dispatching could have a revolutionary impact on areas that are currently under-served by public transit.
Car pool lanes will likely be a big reason people choose to pool in autonomous cars. I imagine that self driving cars will make traffic much worse, and we will see a movement where cities create more and more HOV lanes to reduce traffic in such situations.
"I imagine that self driving cars will make traffic much worse"
With fewer accidents causing traffic jams it could be much better. Eventually many autonomous cars will probably network with one another to create an optimal traffic pattern as well.
If I could press a button and have a car pick me up, take me to the train station, get on a train, and have a car waiting on the other side I'd choose that over the present litany of call a car, hope it arrives in time, get on the train, arrive at the station, wait around for a car. Many times I'm just too tired (or lazy) to do that, and call a car for the whole journey instead.
There's a radical idea that could be looked into - have a very large autonomous car, carrying 20-100 people. With enough of them, we could reduce traffic, save money (Compared to the cost of private vehicle ownership) - and the best part is, from the perspective of the riders, it will be self-driving.
Why should we invest into self-driving carpools, when buses are cheaper, and more efficient?
Fixed routes and last mile. Buses are particularly poor on that.
I'm thinking on mini buses, 10 to 20 pax, with flexible dispatching. A service where you tell where you live, where you want to get to every workday at what time. Algorithms pool people and make sure you don't have to walk more than a few minutes. Nor wait for long before journey or arrive too early.
Buses have poor last-mile economics because the overwhelming majority of commuters drive, killing any hope for economies of scale. If there were fewer cars on the road, bus coverage would be much better then what you're used to. (If we were to use 20-person mini-buses.)
Over a short term, yes, but there's likely to be work done on co-operation + communication standards between autocars. If a cars at an intersection are all auto, a quick Raft election can decide who goes first, so they'll all get to go through much faster. Broadcasting intention can also help with overtaking, trailing, etc. And if road train standards get built in they can all run much faster and more efficiently on highways as well.
... and the roadway is not used/intersected by cyclists, pedestrians, or anything that isn't an autonomous vehicle...
I think this stuff is super promising, but it alarms me how often we forget that streets are used by more than motor vehicles. The fact that roads are used by a mixture of users is a feature, not a bug.
From the provider's perspective it means they can serve the same number of customers with fewer cars, and from a public infrastructure perspective it means they can do so with less total road capacity. For both, it makes sense to create price incentives to encourage people to pool, especially at peak times.
