The trick is you do both buses and trains. You use the buses to connect communities that don’t have large transit requirements between them and then for commuting you use buses to direct people to train stations where they can get the trains to work/ where they need to go en masse. Transportation is a multilevel solution that requires multiple modes to get people where they need to go but you can’t just rely on buses as quite frankly they lack the ability move all that many people even across quite short distances.
Also to address the self driving part: autonomous road vehicles that can operate safely and at scale are well in the fucking magic territory of technology. If you want a proven highly autonomous travel technique that works trains have been doing it for decades.
The trick is you do both buses and trains. You use the buses to connect communities that don’t have large transit requirements between them and then for commuting you use buses to direct people to train stations where they can get the trains to work/ where they need to go en masse. Transportation is a multilevel solution that requires multiple modes to get people where they need to go but you can’t just rely on buses as quite frankly they lack the ability move all that many people even across quite short distances.
Also to address the self driving part: autonomous road vehicles that can operate safely and at scale are well in the fucking magic territory of technology. If you want a proven highly autonomous travel technique that works trains have been doing it for decades.