> I'm thinking of something like cities could designate specific routes and lanes for L4 cars with designated drop-off locations

I always find it interesting that the further down the road of self-driving we go the more it seems like its a techy version of a known but morre low tech paradigm. This if taken without the self driving part just sounds like a bus lane with bus stops. In fact the driving of a car would be a less efficient mode of transportation considering that they usually only carry one person at a time.

I used to be very pro self-driving cars, but tthte moree I explored urbanism and transportation the more it became apparent that, self-driving is over optimization of an already bad paradigm that is car-centric development. You could cut out the middle man of needing a self driving car if you didn't live far away from the things you needed or if the public transit was efficient and reliable, that seems way easier than trying to figure out how to make cars drive themselves!