> Imagine sinking all that money that's being blown on self-driving cars into pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure

This does jack squat for getting across San Francisco or from corner to corner of Phoenix.

Phoenix has some really awesome bicycle paths, like along the ancient canal system. I was able to ride my bicycle home after a concert in Glendale to Tempe. It took hours and hours, but the weather was fine and conditions were favorable.

SF is not really a great bikeable city; almost any location to any location involves hills, some of them really significant. The streets are also not laid out in a reasonable pattern in many locations.

Getting from outer sunset to market by bike daily isn't really practical, especially during Weather.,

Well yeah, that's pretty much the point. San Francisco is not particularly walkable or bikeable by an objective standard (although it's still doable). Imagine if we sunk money into improving infrastructure instead of subsidizing autonomous vehicles.

> Individual vehicles suffer from massive inefficiency compared to nearly any other form of transportation

I though this too until I looked at the true dollar costs or carbon impact per passenger mile. That doesn't even account for the externalities of particulate pollution and road wear. The buses in my city are also filthy diesel, belching thick, noxious, clouds of soot as they accelerate away from the stop, right at crowds of people who just got off the bus. Heavy buses also require special concrete pads at every stop and still do heavy damage to the road surface: rutting and exacerbating potholes.

That sounds like a problem with your city. I've not seen a diesel car or truck belching smoke out here in decades. San Francisco phased out the two stroke diesels in the late 00s, and even those were a lot cleaner than the two strokes of my youth.

  still do heavy damage to the road surface: rutting and exacerbating potholes.

Sure, the wear goes up exponentially with the weight (and axle loading). OTOH you need significantly more cars than buses to move people around. Investing in mixed-use development and better pedestrian infrastructure means that fewer people need to use mechanized transport.

Look at lord Elno's autonomous vehicle tunnel – individual vehicles simply don't scale.

This is probably my mistake, they may not be diesel, but there is a lot of sooty exhaust, so they're probably burning oil.

There shouldn't be a lot of sooty exhaust. Well, there doesn't have to be. San Francisco's run diesel-electric hybrids for about fifteen years now and California is far more stringent about diesel emissions than most of the rest of the country. So, sure, it's entirely believable that you're seeing buses belch smoke but it's also mandatory.

Unleaded gasoline will leave a nasty residue on your exhaust but that's about as bad as it (should) get. Alcohol and gas will burn cleaner but come with their own drawbacks. Trolley buses, of course, don't have tailpipe emissions but not everyone is willing to put up with the overhead infrastructure.

And hey, battery EV buses are starting to become a thing too (e.g. SF is trialing ones from a few different manufacturers).

There's probably nothing better for bikes and pedestrians than self-driving cars. With autonomous drivers, every road becomes safe for bikes and pedestrians.