XPost: rec.arts.sf.written, rec.arts.sf.science   
   From: rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com   
      
   "Doc O'Leary"  wrote in message   
   news:droleary-B11FC5.14025914012014@news.eternal-september.org...   
   > 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.   
      
   No it wouldn’t, because that would be much less flexible   
   than a self drive car based system and doesn’t integrate   
   as well with human driven car based systems either.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)