ITT: Fuck poor people.

In general though (liberal) elites are really big on public transit since if all the stupid poor people would only ride the bus like they are supposed to it means they can drive to work on less congested roads and there would be less air pollution when they go out jogging.

I would suggest that public transit is seen by the bulk of (American) society as something for kids and old folks to use. Cars are more convenient, if you have one you want to be able to drive it.

This concept could be applied to a lot of things...

But to the topic at hand, public transit, the author may be projecting a bit himself. Mass transit in some cities (those that urbanized mainly in the 20th century) is just not efficient nor desired. Urban to suburban sprawl necessitates car ownership. You're just not going to get around that.

Add to that my own personal anecdotes of Atlanta's MARTA where once I saw a person get stabbed to death in front of me and on other occasions buses miss entire scheduled windows. I'll take my motorcycle to work if I want to endanger my life and at least then my time is mostly under my control.

You don't have to be that elite to own a car in most cities around the US. So I wouldn't say it's a minority of elites stopping mass transit. You need majority buy in and that's just not going to be there universally.

You honestly just used your own anecdotes as evidence against an article about self-projection?

Smooth.

I don't necessarily agree with your points, just upmodding to counter the reflex downmod. I appreciate the efforts you've been making lately to engage in reasonable discussion; I think some folks around here have forgotten what it's like to see dissenting opinions that aren't just blatant trolling.

It's not reflexive. A downmod happens to be more polite than the words I have for his constant mealy mouthed submissive streak he's got for the authoritarians. He's had his chance for polite debate and instead dodges and ignores when people put him in a corner. He's a joke who knows how to put two words together and for some reason certain people around here think that makes him intelligent. He's made clear his views and has shown to be full of shit. A downmod does the job just fine. You want to waste your time, go nuts.

I think the downmod-without-comment treatment is fine for pure troll accounts like numbers and fish, but norok has actually been participating in the community like a normal human being lately, engaging in conversations about computers and video games or whatever without bringing politics into it at all. If the dude is willing to act like a community member, why shouldn't we be willing to treat him like one?

Because he's still not bringing anything to the table I'm interested in. You're acting like 10 or 15 comments of not being an insufferable asshole should have me asking him out for drinks. That comment up there is the same self-centered bullshit he's constantly spewing. It's boring, it's predictable, and it's shortsighted.

No YOU!

I rode the MARTA a few times in the mid 90's, biggest issue I saw was talkative day-drunk folks.
Here in Portland area there was a pretty bad stabbing on the MAX earlier this year, but that's not a regular occurance. i use the bus and light rail here pretty extensively even though i own a car - it is cheaper than owning two cars.

good mass transit is useful, poorly planned mass transit gets underutilized - The BART is a good example of the latter, though i was on the CalTrain for first time a few weeks back and it was reasonably nice.

I don't think you need car ownership to make it work - car ownership is just better in almost every-way to mass transit in most places. The alternative just needs to be better than owning and commuting with a car - which, let's be honest, is a pretty low bar.

The article makes a good point, but I'm not sure Public Transit is the hill to die on. In 10 years, or less, car ownership will probably be a weirder thing than we think. Netflix for Cars will 100% be a thing. You just pay $10/mo and you get unlimited car rides in the city in self-driving electric cars. Significantly cheaper than the $50+/mo for a bus pass. With driverless, non-polluting cars - mass transit within a metro area doesn't make any sense.

Now, the same mistake powers the endless vague promises of tech disruption in transit, especially the mathematically absurd notion that transit that comes to your door when you call it will scale to the entire population of a dense city. (Serious experts have largely abandoned this claim, but it is out there in the discourse, undermining support for transit that actually works.)

The author specifically addresses the misunderstanding about that being possible. Apparently that trending idea is a peeve of his.

how "big" does the mass transit vehicle have to be to be effective? a bus can hold let's say 25 seated passengers, a minivan can hold 8, a sedan can hold 4. if you adopt a hub-and-spoke model then you can just move people between higher and lower capacity autonomous vehicles. door to door may make sense for local milkruns, but if people are thinking "Uber without a driver" (which, ironically Uber is) i also think that will fail.

I don't know, that's not my specialty, but the author has a whole blog on this sort of material that may interest you.

I read his other article and don't really find it compelling. His argument is that the bus is a denser way to deal with moving people. But that doesn't solve the geometry problem he's talking about, it just delays it. And does so in a way that provides an inferior experience for those transporting themselves. It's not a solution, it's the same kicking of the can down the road.

I hope the future (20-40 years from now) doesn't look like a bunch of automated cars everywhere, but I REALLY hope the future doesn't look like a lot of buses everywhere.

I assume driverless buses will become popular before driverless cars will.

I was considering that but I feel like there is a larger human element with a bus driver - helping people, paying fares, seeing if people are waiting, etc.