[Waterluvian]

I think you answered your own question.

I want a door to door bus without the homeless guy and two kids yapping on their phones.

I would love to never own or be responsible for a car ever again. Just summon them when needed or book them in advance.

[ronilan]

Your wish will be summoned. Just make sure to never have kids and never fall on your luck.

[baddox]

I don't quite understand your argument. Should I enjoy sitting near people having violent mental health crises because I might one day have a mental health crisis? It seems to me that the compassionate approach would be to support the availability of mental health care. Being content with sharing public space with people suffering from mental health problems does not seem like a compassionate or helpful approach.

[true_religion]

You? Probably not but true OP was taking about kids on cellphones, and people who looked poor.

[rorykoehler]

Why no kids? I'm a dad without a car. I never wish I had a car.

[jiofih]

It’s about not having to “deal” with kids on the bus.

[puranjay]

How is it ab absolutist either/or situation?

You can have public buses as well as a private fleet of self driving cars.

[adolph]

Embrace the power of “and.” Public transit can coexist with whatever this future thing will be called.

[wpietri]

Maybe. But the more well-off people crawl into cocooned experiences, the less they care about public infrastructure. Look, for example, at how suburbs not only often lack public transit themselves, but work to fight regional transit.

[pb7]

Well-off people are already the ones (involuntarily) funding the public infrastructure. No need to guilt trip any further.

[wpietri]

They are funding it less and less. And things like the wave of white flight and suburbanization in the 1960s and 1970s make it clear how comfortable well-off white people are doing that.

In any case, I'm not arguing for guilt trips as a means of solving the problem. Instead, I think the right solution is the bedrock of any community: shared experience.

[Waterluvian]

Are you implying this replaces mass transit? I don't understand how that makes any sense. Why didn't cars replace mass transit? Why hasn't Uber killed mass transit?

[jonstewart]

Cars did replace mass transit in many cities. Many cities had better mass transit decades ago than they do now. And ridesharing companies have had deleterious effects on mass transit. They haven’t killed it, but studies are starting to show there’s been some harm and, at the same time, that ridesharing contributes to worsening congestion.