https://www.wired.com/story/autonomous-vehicles-might-drive-cities-to-financial-ruin/ "The advent of driverless cars will likely mean that municipalities will have to make do with much, much less." In essence, the article is making the case that we should put the kibosh on autonomous vehicle introductions into cities because the substantially reduced tax base would hollow out and destroy urban governments - rendering cities useless more or less. The author mentions urban 'pension overhangs' in passing - but IMO that is a much bigger and more immediate concern than Elon Musk ever will be. And no infrastructure subsidy from the Federal Government would ever be able to touch that elephant in the room (pensions). I would like to know: 'what's wrong with autonomous electric buses or trolleys as public transportation?' Regardless of political affiliation, from my own observations most Americans won't walk more than five city blocks before procuring a cab or Uber comes into the calculus. An interesting read. For a number of reasons, mass transit just isn't really sustainable in the United States beyond certain limited urban situations. IMO, it's a matter of scale and size and financial viability. https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/politics-is-failing-mass-transit/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/joelko...ff-the-rails-in-many-u-s-cities/#412b2b0366b5 "Journalists in older cities like New York, Boston or San Francisco may see the role of rail transit as critical to a functioning modern city. In reality, rail transit has been a financial and policy failure outside of a handful of cities."
The line "rail transit has been a financial and policy failure " and that second article are examples how the R's try to sway public opinion to get mass transit solely into the hands of private enterprise.
I think that Elon Musk and SpaceEx has done a far better job than the R's (or the D's) when it comes to "swaying the public" on the relative effectiveness of the public sector versus the private sector.
There would be no SpaceX without NASA. Govt put man on the moon in 1969, we're still waiting on the private sector.
Australia is the same size bar shouting as the US. You could look at mass transit there for some clues. As was proved by McDonalds, capacity creates demand (The Founder) movie anyway. The article makes an observation about lost revenue "Many will be electric, will never get a ticket, and can circle the block endlessly rather than park." Until the city says cars must park to prevent congestion and oblige car makers to code for this once they have no occupants. Driverless or not, the will need to be licenced, taxed etc. A boon will be the increased speed in congestion hours, with humans the more cars there are the slower they go descending to gridlock, with computers the opposite can happen in AI only lanes. This will allow growth in choked cities.