The Dangers of Elite Projection (2017)
The article&#x27;s idea of a &quot;elite&quot; is a person who relies on a car to get around. I find it unintentionally funny, as people who rely on transit in the US are either big city urban elites, or the poor stuck in crappy burbs with shitty mobility. Thus, &quot;more transit&quot; is itself the elite projection, as it supposes that what&#x27;s good for the urban elite, must be good for everyone else.<p>It would help if you thought of transit as a continuum:<p>- the private single-occupancy car<p>- shared car<p>- shared mini bus<p>- bus<p>- tram (ie, n linked busses)<p>- subway (ie n linked trams, underground)<p>This is hard to see today, but autonomous cars will essentially bring this about. Everybody will be riding in autonomous vehicles. If you&#x27;re well-off, you&#x27;ll pay for more privacy and space and time (vehicle comes to you, goes to your destination), if you&#x27;re not so well off, you&#x27;ll share the vehicle with other people and will have to spend more time as the vehicles makes more stops (and each stop will be further from your desired source&#x2F;destination). Busses as we know them today will  become obsolete, as they are functionally equivalent to a heterogenous mix of autonomous vehicles driving in the same direction. Trams will become obsolete, as they are functionally equivalent to the heterogeneous-autonomous-vehicle-chain paying a premium to use a dedicated lane.<p>Basically, everything should be a battery skateboard riding on asphalt by way of rubber. The more you pay, the more privacy you have, the more the mobile battery goes towards your personal destinations.