There are a few companies around the world working on that sort of solution to the public transit problem (called autonomous Personal Rapid Transit), and one or two systems similar to what you’re describing that have been built. Open road autonomy has to deal with all sorts of unexpected situations, still has to contend with traffic (until all cars are communicating with all other cars… very very far in the future), and still quite unprofitable for the driverless robotaxi use case.
PRT - and what it sounds like you’re suggesting - get around these types of problems: By operating in dedicated (fenced off) lanes, the perception and planning problems become trivial (especially if you put sensors on the roadway). With one company building and operating the system, coordination between vehicles becomes possible (with no pedestrians and stations off of the mainline, this means little traffic and still high throughput). Small, lightweight vehicles with reduced sensing/compute requirements are cheaper and require less road space (meaning cheaper infrastructure too)The main downsides I can think of being it would requiring walking to your final destination from the bus stop/station (but for public transit prices instead of Uber prices I’m sure that’d be an appealing option to many), and requires new (or at least dedicated) infrastructure which is a harder sell to companies and cities.
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