​Watching hail ride cannibalize transit, one bite at a time

Partners or Competitors? | The Antiplanner

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"Two weeks ago, the Denver suburb of Centennial announced it would subsidize transit riders to use Uber or Lyft to or from their transit stop from or to their origin or final destination. By solving the “last-mile” problem, they hope that this will make transit more attractive to Centennial residents.

A couple of days later, the Livermore Amador Valley Transit Authority announced it would do the same for transit riders in Dublin and other nearby suburbs of San Francisco-Oakland."

This simply acclimates these riders to hail ride, and I can guarantee they will talk to their friends. It also provides Uber/Lyft with a compact area of service in which they can initially roll out self drive hail ride vehicles. 

This will allow people to become acclimatized to the self drive feature, and you can bet the riders will be happy to talk about this experience. It will also allow the Uber/Lyft companies to determine how cars should be configured. All of these things will only speed the advent, and transition to the shared-hailed-self-drive vehicle. This is a calculated cannibalization of transit by these companies, with transit paying for the privilege. 

This is the very best option imaginable. Today there is a serious ride inequality between what the middle class, and the wealthy have, personal vehicles, and the highly limited transit options the poor have. The shared-hailed-self-drive vehicle will quickly equalize this ride inequality.

A last point, the difference between free markets, and socialism is that socialism creates ever more barriers to equality, whether it be ride, or income, or housing, or anything. The entire point of socialism is to create a class system which in the end is the equivalent to feudalism. On the other hand, the free market, or capitalist system is designed to continually erode the class system, allowing the middle, and poorer classes access to products, and services once only permitted to the wealthy. The wealthy hate this system, as do the intellectuals. 

Here, the capitalist shared-hailed-self-drive vehicle will create affordable door-to-door transit services to everyone in safe, comfortable, efficient automobiles. 

Socialism want the poor to ride the buss, the middle class to ride a rail option, and the wealthy to drive personal autos. 

The cost of the capitalist option will be far less than the cost of the socialist option, it will pollute less, it will perform better, safer, and more efficiently from both a human, and vehicle standpoint. Yet, the wealthy, the socialist, the antihuman environmentalist, the intellectuals will all detest the capitalist option. To them the bug is the equality, the feature the inequality. Know your place peasant.

Watching this will be one of the most satisfying events of my lifetime.