The near gridlock on SOMA streets every rush hour isn&#x27;t because of a compression wave - there are simply too many people trying to drive out of the city at once. Even if magical cars could erase congestion on freeways, there&#x27;s still the problem of not enough parking for everyone that would have to drive without public transit.<p>And don&#x27;t say &quot;But self driving cars will fix everything! They don&#x27;t even need to park, they can drop you off at work and drive away&quot;. If the cars aren&#x27;t parked, they are contributing to congestion. And since commutes aren&#x27;t generally balanced, it&#x27;s not like the self-driving car will leave Walnut Creek at 8am, drop you off in SF at 9am and then pick up a new passenger to head back to the East Bay - that car is going to be loitering around SF somewhere, waiting to take someone back home to the East Bay.<p>SF Muni carries 600,000 passengers&#x2F;day. BART carries 400K (though not all to SF). Caltrain contributes another 50K. How could you possible accomodate all of these people without transit?<p>Like I said, building effective transit in existing cities is very expensive -- the BART system cost around $1.5B when it was built (around $20B today), but few would argue that SF would be better off without it.