[l33tman]

Why would you do that, a bus driver costs $10/h and the bus costs several $100k even if it's NOT self driving. The cost of the driver must be miniscule in comparision, not to mention if the self-driving bus and associated insurances will cost many more factors of $100k...

[rsynnott]

> a bus driver costs $10/h

For an urban transport system bus driver (vs say someone driving a private minibus)? Not sure where that is, but it's closer to 1000eur/week here. 39 hour week, 4 weeks holidays, so >25eur/hour, plus benefits, employer tax, and so on and so forth.

I doubt self-driving city buses will be a thing anytime for a while, but it's not because the drivers are cheap, it's because the job's actually quite difficult.

[mft_]

It doesn't neccessarily invalidate your overall point, but a bus driver would cost significantly more than $10/h. In Germany, the hourly rate is closer to double that, plus additional costs the employer must pay, such as taxes and a contribution towards healthcare. Plus the overhead of recruitment, training, HR, uniforms, sickness cover, etc...

[vidarh]

And when you've bought the bus, a self-driving bus can operate 24/7, but to get 24/7 coverage with drivers you need at least 3 drivers per bus, probably more like 4 when accounting for illness and time off. You can cut that a bit and cut operating hours without major effect on service, but it's still going to be more than 1 at least.

[saalweachter]

A bus driver costs $10/h (or whatever; an NYC bus driver averages $28/h) per hour of operation.

A transit bus lasts an average of 12 years, and even if you don't run it nights or weekends, that's still around 50,000 hours of driving.

That's $500k at $10/h, and if you run a bus 24/7 in NYC you could spend $3M over the course of the bus's life.

[BobaFloutist]

Per hour per hour? Ok, let's see...second-order integral (these always confuse me because rates are stepping up a dimension but derivatives are stepping down a dimension, but that's neither here nor there), assuming no constants, so they start at 0$/h and there's no sign up bonus...

Got it. After one day, they've made $3423.33 A week gets them over two million dollars, putting a solid, but not insurmountable, dent in the transportation budget. A month over five-hundred million, easily bankrupting most midsized towns. After a year they've made almost half the entirety of the US GDP.

Maybe I should become a bus driver.