Leap never bothered to secure a license to operate a transit service.  They were illegal from day one, they were issued a cease and desist in May of 2015, and they started auctioning off the buses in June.<p>For-profit city bus services were both normal and somewhat profitable up until the 1920s, when private cars became affordable.  Leap borrowed a 19th century business model and pretended they didn&#x27;t need to meet 21st century requirements.<p>As usual, Farhad Manjoo misses the forest for the trees.