Public transportation sucks at a fundamental level. It's a graph with an extremely limited number of nodes on a completely fixed schedule. That's clearly inferior to free travel from any point to any point.
Given equal travel time I'd pick an autonomous car over train or bus 100% of the time. I'd pick a self driven car 100% of the time when not inebriated. For the most part faster travel time in a train or bus isn't a sign of their superiority but a sign of failure in proper infrastructure for cars. =I've been throughout Europe. Including two weeks in Vienna. I still think public transportation sucks and asking for more is asking for a faster horse.
In the United States I'd argue there isn't a single city with good public transportation. Not one. Some folks will list NYC as a good example. I don't consider a city with the single worst commute time in the entire country as a positive example. [1]
Cars suck at a fundamental level too, because only a quite limited amount of people can move from "any point" to "any point". Otherwise there everyone is stuck for hours. That does not happen nearly as often with public transport or bikes. You also need to sacrify a fair amount of your cities to cars, parking alone takes a lot of space.
Your infrastructure argument works in both ways: The fact that there's no city with working public transport in the US is a result of communities who primarily plan for cars, nothing more.
Given equal travel time I'd pick an autonomous car over train or bus 100% of the time. I'd pick a self driven car 100% of the time when not inebriated. For the most part faster travel time in a train or bus isn't a sign of their superiority but a sign of failure in proper infrastructure for cars. =I've been throughout Europe. Including two weeks in Vienna. I still think public transportation sucks and asking for more is asking for a faster horse.
In the United States I'd argue there isn't a single city with good public transportation. Not one. Some folks will list NYC as a good example. I don't consider a city with the single worst commute time in the entire country as a positive example. [1]
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst/longest-...