The road ahead
Three phases, and each one takes a person off the street. We will not claim a phase until we are in it. We are before the first.
Phase 1
Nobody drives
One handler, ten vehicles, none of them in the street.
The handler sits in an operations room and watches ten units at once. They take over when the street stops matching the plan: a blocked curb, a truck double parked across the stop, a lane shut since the morning. The drop is still done by a person, with the same gesture every time.
Phase 2
Nobody watches
Night runs first, on the routes that have earned it.
Supervision comes off a route once it has earned it. Night first, because the street is emptiest then and a building's schedule is the most predictable thing about it. Nobody rides along. There is no phase in this plan where a person sits in a Trashy.
Phase 3
Nobody loads
The last human step, done by a machine.
The drop is the last thing a person does, and it is why the lid, the height and the tap target were settled this early. The motion does not change when the thing performing it changes.
Built now for a road that does not exist yet
The pickup spot pin, the one-gesture drop, the sensor-called run, the depot, the account model. Each is designed today for a fleet that drives itself and a loader that is a machine.
None of it gets rebuilt the day nobody is watching.
The lid splits down the middle and opens from either side, so the motion is the same wherever you stand.