XPost: rec.arts.sf.written, rec.arts.sf.science   
   From: droleary@8usenet2013.subsume.com   
      
   In article ,   
    "Leszek Karlik"  wrote:   
      
   > The sentence "Some people can't afford a taxi." doesn't mean that   
   > some people are not able to buy a taxi cab. :-)) When I was a student,   
   > I used public transport, because taxis were pretty much too expensive   
   > for my budget.   
      
   But that is the application of current, scarcity-constrained thinking on   
   the matter.  A taxi is a car + driver, and the majority expense in that   
   equation is the driver.  A bus works essentially the same way, but by   
   spreading the cost of the driver across more people.  They *should* be   
   treated very much alike, but current systems fail to subsume them   
   properly.   
      
   > Whey there's a fleet of municipal smart cars that don't need taxi   
   > drivers, you could plausibly have taxis at a price point of   
   > public transport. Say, a monthly "taxi card", with a discount   
   > for being lower-priority (for students and poor people) and   
   > surcharge for being a high-priority passenger.   
      
   In reality, you could do this today with some adjustments to logistics.   
   Public transit is *not* efficient when your best idea is to have big   
   empty busses moving along fixed routes at fixed schedules.  A few years   
   back I worked out a system where you could get door-to-door travel   
   across Minneapolis (inside the *94 loop; roughly a 20 mile radius) in 30   
   minutes for $5.  It'd cost more today, of course, but nobody seems to be   
   willing to even experiment with such things.   
      
   In a world where self-driving cars are everywhere, those logistics   
   issues are going to be solved for free.  But make no mistake that it's   
   *not* the car that will be important, which is why it'd be just as smart   
   to rebuild our rail infrastructure.   
      
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