Autonomous cars instead of public transit – Beverly Hills leads the way

Beverly Hills – a small California city you may have heard of – is planning to create a publicly accessible system using autonomous vehicles as point-to-point transportation, instead of something old-fashioned like buses. This is forward-looking and cool, or else elitist and obfuscating, depending on your point of view. Treehugger thinks the latter:

The press release notes that “as envisioned, the A.V. shuttles would provide on-demand, point-to-point transportation within the City, with users requesting a ride using their smart phones.” Because being Beverly Hills, the poor, the aged and everyone else has a smart phone. TreeHugger has previously looked at how the promise of AVs has been used to avoid dealing with the need for public transit.

Here’s the post.