Driverless Alternatives: New Microtransit, New Urban Sprawl?

Most contemporary coverage of driverless vehicles is only about driverless cars. But analysis of a suburban automated car future is one step too far down the analytical pipeline. Driverless vehicles can develop as solo cars serving distant houses with limited stops, or as minibuses (and big buses!) serving denser neighborhoods with frequent stops. Booming cities may grow denser in the core even as they sprawl further on the fringe. The future balance of these two development models will be a function not only of what consumers want or what Google/Waymo cooks up next, but of our political land use and infrastructure choices.