Driverless buses are coming to UK roads, with Milton Keynes and Sunderland leading the charge.

You are viewing a single thread.
View all comments
20 points

Are We Ready For Driverless Buses?

If they’re on a set of parallel metal beams on the ground, absolutely!

permalink
report
reply
5 points

The advantage of busways is that they’re a lot cheaper to build than trains. You just need some paint on pavement to build a dedicated bus lane. All you have to really build are some nice bus stops. The big problem with trains is vertical and horizontal alignment. You can’t just lay train tracks on top of an existing road system. Cars and buses can handle much greater slopes and perform much steeper turns than trains can.

For example, you can make a busway over an existing road bridge, without any need to rebuild the bridge itself. But you can’t just slap some train tracks on an existing road bridge, as the train would be unable to make it up the slopes designed for car traffic.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points
*

My conclusion is not that we need to replace all the buses with trains, it’s that I’m not okay with replacing manned buses with unmanned ones. Unmanned trains, I’d be fine with, but just keep the manned buses.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Technology

!technology@beehaw.org

Create post

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community’s icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

Community stats

  • 2.8K

    Monthly active users

  • 3K

    Posts

  • 55K

    Comments