Obviously part of the fantasy of self-driving car manufacturer wannabees is that municipalities will participate (cough pay for cough) in the construction of numerous technological and infrastructure aids to make the whole thing more possible. I think even if we grant the willingness to of governments to do this, the scale is...tremendous... and to the extent that this involves technology (sensors/communication etc.) and not just "keeping the lanes painted" type activities, obsolete the instant they're built.
But more than that, it's easy to get governments and transit agencies on board with shiny new projects. It's much much much much harder to get them on board with significant ongoing maintenance.
Similarly, there's this idea that we can take lanes for the use by automated vehicles only. This one is extra weird. It's practically impossible to take a lane from cars to make a bus lane (and even more impossible to do so with any enforcement unless the lanes are physically separated somehow). And if automated cars "need" these lanes then they aren't very automated. If they don't "need" them...um, why should they have them?
