Modern mobility has involve a battle among various modes: private cars, public transit modes, walking, scooters, bikes and more. The arrival of self-driving seriously changes this debate, offering a chance at 21st century transportation which is quite different from the 19th and 20th century technologies in use today. In this article I provide a new video outlining one new self-driving based form of group travel (transit) to expand the view of what is possible.

For the modern urbanist, cars are often the enemy of all the other modes. Today, self-driving is almost seen as robotaxis, which are like cars. To those view cars as the enemy, robotaxis are just more cars, and while they do solve many of the bad things about cars, they could make others worse. It’s important to realize that this technology is far from just “more cars” in order to have an informed debate. (The video below has segments made by AI.)

This particular form is called “Vansit” because its core vehicle is a passenger van, with seating for around 9-16. Larger than private cars but much smaller than buses or trains, the van fits a potential sweet spot for group vehicle size for many reasons. While traditional thinking is that “bigger is more efficient” this is not actually true. The highest load factor (percent of seats filled) is a bigger driver of efficiency. Smaller vehicles are easier to keep full, both because they are easier to fill, and they require less compromise from riders, offering more routes, greater frequency and even non-stop service.

The goal is to make a transit that is better than a car, and not simply because it’s given dedicated right-of-way as trains and BRT are. Anything is better with dedicated right-of-way, but it’s prohibitively expensive. A private car is hard to compete with; it takes the direct shortest route from door to door, on the rider’s schedule, in seated luxury. The only personal downsides are cost and congestion. Public downsides are a different story. Only a mode that riders find a personal superior choice will win.

This repeats the story of the EV. For over a decade, people failed to buy electric cars because they were better for the world. Only when people saw the Tesla as better overall than any competing gasoline car did they attract lots of customers.

I’ve described Vansit for decades, this preliminary video makes it clearer. A better video will come in time. A very short summary is as follows:

  1. A group of people who share a section of their travel route in common is detected. Travel is on-demand, without fixed routes and schedules.
  2. Instead of all getting onto that route together in private cars to stare at each other in traffic jams, single person robotaxis (plus bikes and and other modes) take them to the place where their routes all merge.
  3. At that merge-point, a self-driving van is already waiting when they arrive. They step a few feet to board their assigned, luxury sear, and it drives non-stop along the common section of the route, having taken 10 cars off the road on that route.
  4. Where their routes diverge the van pulls in, next to a variety of vehicles, including bikes, single person robotaxis and more which are already waiting. They complete their last mile, never detouring from the path they would have driven in a private car.

The Vansit “better-than-car” offering doesn’t come in a vacuum. Also important is the arrival of managed roads. Until recently, roads have been a commons. When 2,000 cars want to drive a road that can handle 1,500, they all attempt it, and nobody gets anywhere. Today, we’re fixing that with tools like metering lights, HOT managed lanes and most of all, congestion charging. More and better tools are coming to control demand and better share the shared right-of-way. While Vansit, like 20th century transit, would do very well with dedicated ROW, it’s much more cost-effective to share ROW.

The result scores better than both car travel and any existing transit mode. While the trip has transfers the car does not, they are short and in exchange, the cost of most of the ride is shared and thus 1/5th of the price of a private car. If the vehicle gets privileged access to ROW such as pooling lanes, it will also be faster. The trip uses much less energy and money per passenger-mile than any motorized transit mode, and to the surprise of many, can offer significantly more seated capacity than any heavy rail (subway) line. The seated capacity is modestly less than the standing room capacity of heavy rail, though that could be surpassed with vehicles adapted for standing trips (which are not something riders much desire.)

20th century transit provides “station to station” service at fixed intervals during service hours to the able bodied who live near a stop. The 21st century options can serve people of any mobility level, from anywhere to anywhere, 24/7.

Vansit was designed to do the best job of hitting all of the individual and public goals for transportation. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, and indeed the better a system is, the more people will use it to more places, which enables low density and more use of streets (unless tunnels are provide as for subways.) While it would greatly improve service to transfer the existing private ROW of older transit lines to Vansit style, almost all such lines were designed with “in-line” stations where the vehicle blocks the line when stopped in the station; there is no place to “pull over” to avoid blocking through vehicles. It will often be costly to convert them.

Here’s a more detailed outline of how well Vansit does at meeting the transportation goals .

In addition here is a set of points and FAQs about Vansit .

This is not simply a reinvention of the bus or vanpool. Vansit wasn’t possible before. Self-driving is essential here, not as much for the vans but for the first and last mile small vehicles. Robots won’t complain about driving people half a mile, or waiting around. It’s not economical to use human driven taxis for that. The middle vehicles also need to be easily computer-dispatched and not mind waiting. It’s key that humans never wait, except a few minutes in their own home or point of origin, where it’s not really waiting. That’s key for being better than a car, since your car never makes you wait.

Another big win is being able to make use of existing infrastructure, as well as making any new infrastructure that is needed general-purpose and much cheaper. Tunnels, viaducts and even roads can be vastly cheaper for small, light vehicles, compared to today’s train tunnels (which are surpassing $1.5 billion with stations for a bidirectional mile, compared with $30M/lane-mile for small vehicle tunnels) or even today’s road underpasses/overpasses which must handle 40-ton, 13.5 foot tall semi-trucks rather than 3-ton 6 foot tall vans.