It's deeply imperfect, and the most likely equilibrium is that they're cheaper and better taxis for urban & semi-urban areas. But that, combined with the "dramatically safer than a human" aspect makes me cautiously hopeful that they could spur a sea change vs the private car status quo.

My take on it is that there is no near future where we ban cars and flip the dominant land use pattern in the US to walkable urbanism. With that premise, a car that:
- kills 99% fewer people
- is polite to pedestrians
- is not privately owned (ergo no driveway)
...is a great step forward.

Californication will come for us all; whether someone cares & fights (like in CA) or just gives up and let's the NIMBYs have their way with things will determine each state's fate over the next 50 years

Within the decade this will no longer look like a rendering of dystopia

Years of under-building has resulted in city livers in denial about where they live!!

And I just don't think that will work. The driving incentives are too strong, the patterns too baked in. To truly have good suburbs, you HAVE to fully sacrifice car access, even if it means that only an affluent few can access it- because you can build that core out more than you can retrofit it.

If you look at the classic streetcar suburbs, their success stems from a good transit link combined with small-scale urbanism.

New Urbanist developments try to recreate the form, while missing the function. I think the author misses that in favor of arguing incrementalism.

The fundamental tension in the suburbs is that of driveability vs walkability. To get one, you must sacrifice the other, and lots of the New Urbanist model relies upon trying to have your cake and eat it too. Planning for driving by building costly alleyways is still planning for driving.

I think this misses the mark, badly. It recognizes issues with New Urbanism, but then recommends a treatment that is essentially the car-oriented status quo with an undefined hope of evolution into something good...eventually

If cities listened to drivers, parking everywhere would be free, every building would be on top of a garage, and they'd be bankrupt cause no one would want to go there

A quick check in with the urban planners of the 1950s would suggest that their prognosis of "destroy the city so that the suburbanites can drive in".... didn't quite pan out

Ahh, I'm actually very familiar with that one! If you take the regional rail from Media station, it's $6.50. If you take the D1 trolley to the L, it's $2.50 (due to free transfer).

Almost 3x the cost is absurd!

As is, it currently becomes approximately cost competitive to Uber once you hit 4 people. If you made that your threshold & offered reliable service, you could get a lot of riders you wouldn't normally have

SEPTA offers multi-tap on SEPTA keys, where one rider can tap multiple times for friends traveling with them. I'd love to see that expanded on with a decreasing cost for each additional rider & beyond a certain point additional fares are free. It would encourage more group riders!

Feels like single zone fares could be self-defeating? Obviously a transit agency is operating service regardless, but a 30+ mi service will de facto cost more to operate than a <10mi local, so wouldn't removing zones just mean more costly trips?

Elon breaks everything he touches- Twitter, the government, his marriages...

What are the odds this is funded by some slumlord?