alt Hacker NewsI'm not really aware of many rich countries that operate minibusses in urban areas. The bulk of the cost of operating public transport is labor so there's a strong incentive to scale.
Now if we get Waymo style self driving minibusses, that'd be great. But if the running costs for full size electric busses aren't too dissimilar it might just make sense to standardize on larger automated busses for increased surge capacity.
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I'm not sure why the should "operate" anything. Any taxi or Uber driver could autonomously decide to put up a route sign and start following that route, with a standard ticket price that makes the service profitable.
In Maricopa County, each city has discretion to operate a system of circulators or shuttles. Many of them do. Many of them are fare-free.
For example, in Scottsdale there are old-timey "trolleys" which look like streetcars, but they are just buses with fancy chassis. They operate routes which go through some neighborhoods and commercial districts, such as Old Town, to get people shopping and gambling and attending events.
In Tempe, there are "Orbit" buses which mostly drive through residential neighborhoods. They are mostly designed to get riders to-and-from standard bus routes and stations. You can also do plenty of shopping and sightseeing and day-drinking on these routes.
In Downtown Phoenix there is a system of "DASH" buses which, among other things, have serviced the Capitol area, which is due west of the downtown hub, where buses fear to tread, because it is also the site of "The Zone" where the worst street people congregate and camp-out.
Now all of these free circulators tend to be popular with the homeless, the poor, and freeloaders, but they are also appreciated by students and ordinary transit passengers, because we need to walk far less, and there are far more possibilities to connect from one route to another.
An innovative feature of many circulators is the "flag stop zone". Rather than having appointed stops with shelters, signs or benches, you can signal the operator that you wish to board or disembark, anywhere in the zone. The operator will stop where it's safe. While it is still a fixed route, it gains some of the flexibility for the passengers to make the most convenient stops.
Hongkong has an extensive mini-bus network -- the green tops (regularly scheduled and more tightly controlled) and the red tops (the wild west). Also, Tokyo runs mini-buses in the (richest) central core between areas that don't have connecting subways & trains.
Vancouver has 20-person minibuses serving suburban routes. They are what make the rest of the transit system work.
I'm told (but have no idea of how true that is, since my social circles don't intersect it) that New York has a cottage industry of private bus-vans, that sit somewhere between a taxi and a vanpool that get people (usually working poor) to and from work.
Visited Florence last year and certain bus lines there were operated by minibusses. I guess some routes with the narrow streets in the city center are impossible to drive with big vehicles.
My fairly rich French city operates minibuses, mostly aimed at old people, which run through the otherwise non-drivable city center. Of course these are short, low-throughput routes.
Rich countries have both buses and taxis. These sit between the two in terms of both quality and price. I don't think it's a cost issue but a licensing one.
Vienna's Nightlines (formerly ASTAX, now Rufbus) are partially like this.
The most Western place I encountered this was West Belfast, twenty years ago. This was after the peace agreement but before public transport had been fully restored. So there were London-style black taxis in certain areas that operated on a shared fee basis; no meter, you'd get in and agree a price, and there might be other people in there going the same way.
Important to note that this was fully private and unregulated.