Self-Driving Cars and Tomorrow’s Bus Drivers
This week, Uber rolled out their fleet of self-driving cars in Pittsburgh. The idea is exciting– but it’s also a culmination of something a bit darker that isn’t Uber’s fault, but a fact of the modern economy.
Uber destroyed the taxi industry, which offered substandard service for several decades, refusing to innovate or give people what they wanted until people finally abandoned them en masse. The taxi industry did this to themselves, but the result was disastrous for anyone who wants to drive a personal commuter vehicle, even the ones who took the jobs with Uber that replaced jobs in the taxi industry. Now, the future is clear. There’s won’t be Uber drivers 10 years from now, and probably earlier. That’s where we are, and there’s no going back.
The next frontiers of industries largely made up of drivers are buses and trucking. The destiny of the former (which I’m focusing on in this post) has massive implications for cities around the world. At some point, self-driving technology will come to buses. So what do we do about the bus drivers of the future? One path is to put society on auto-pilot, preserve the jobs of people that drive buses until the last possible moment, then eventually watching those jobs disappear. The other is to be proactive and reinvent what the term “bus driver” means.
Today, bus drivers have a few core responsibilities:
- Drive the bus
- Make sure everyone pays their fare
- Keep order on the bus
- Answer questions and give people information as requested
They need to spend most of their time on the first bullet point — actually operating the vehicle. However, if you took that off of their plates, they still have responsibilities that would need to be fulfilled.
The biggest different between what a bus driver does now and what they’ll do in the future starts with what direction their seat faces. The skill set they need will be a completely different one than they have today. Instead of workers with technical skills, they can serve as civic ambassadors. They’ll be the face of the city, to residents and outsiders, and they’ll help guide people around town, instead of just steering them around town.
Today, bus drivers face the road, and away from every single person on the bus. In 20 years, their seats could face backwards, with their main focus being the customers themselves, instead of other vehicles. Instead of checking their blind spots, they can help riders figure out the best stop to get off at. Instead of figuring out the best way to merge into traffic, they can help an old woman carry her groceries on and off the bus. They’ll still ensure people are paying their fares, get people back in line when they’re breaking the rules, and help people figure out where to go. But they’ll do it much better than they do it today, as well as a whole lot more.
If cities around the globe don’t proactively begin to think about what the future looks like for this class of workers, they’ll have no input on shaping the future of these jobs, and will see them slowly eliminated as time goes on. While that may save cities money in the short-term, I have no doubt that it will make public transportation a more painful experience for riders, destroy another good middle class profession, and make the cities a worse place to be a resident over time.
Technology can, and likely will, consume the jobs of everyone who drives a vehicle. Cities can start preparing for this, or they can wait to have their hands forced by companies that are pioneering this technology. The smart ones will develop a new way of doing things, and help shape the future of the profession. The dumb ones will lose out, and in doing so, miss a huge opportunity to make their cities a better place to call home.
