Comment by zmmmmm

It's actually more efficient at scale, because it increases the economy at a lower cost. Poor or rural communities can be connected to more places with jobs, schools, etc. Those people can then grow more capital by not having to pay for expensive personal transportation. Meaning more people working, making money, contributing that money back to the economy, less cost to things like ERs, crime, etc. It lifts up the whole society, so it costs much less in real terms.

The last mile has more options than ever. E-bikes, sit-on scooters, golf carts, or that crazy trend of "walking" that I hear is good for your health. There's even the option for smaller, local mini-buses to serve the elderly and disabled. Those same vehicles could be combined with other services, like postal mail, food delivery (for elderly/disabled/infirm).

Where I live in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, we have the mini-bus to serve vulnerable people. The mail is delivered by local people with Subarus and Jeeps. But there's no other public transit. The closest thing to it is a charter bus, which only runs through a town 45 minutes from here, once a week. There's thousands of people out here, disconnected from the rest of society. And they're poor, so the few vehicles they have are always falling apart, and mechanics shops are always full. There is a taxi service in a nearby town (45mins away), and it has a 1.5 out of 5 star rating, because no alternatives means you have no choice but to deal with how terrible they are.

Autonomous vehicles are a good idea, but it's unlikely they will pan out in the long term, unless via "corporate welfare" or similar funding. The cost to develop, maintain, insure, etc them is just way more expensive than a dude in a driver's seat. They are being floated by SV money in rich cities; they won't scale.

The Scottish Government provides free at the point of use bus service for under-22s. I wish we could have had that 25 years ago when I first moved here. As it is, it's an ideal way for the teens to get around and makes it the sensible option when taking children into the city during the daytime.

Driving is prohibitively expensive for young people, and in the UK you can't drive cars on public roads until you're 17.

> Then it doesn't work for whole categories of people (families with small kids, etc) especially because it fundamentally just can't do the "last mile", pretty much ever.

That's bullshit. My whole childhood I went everywhere by train and bus. You can walk the last mile if the bus stop isn't close enough to where you need to go.

I know some (embarrassingly rich) countries are incapable of designing a halfway decent public transit system, but the problem isn't with public transit itself.

I take my small kids on public transit often. Why can't kids ride a bus or a train? Don't we even have special forms of mass transit for little kids (school busses?)

How are cars better with little kids? If I'm in the car with my kids and one kid suddenly really wants a snack, there's nothing I can do. They're strapped in the back, I'm in the front driving. On the train, I just grab a snack from my bag and give them a bite. Or if they're bored I can play with them, etc.

> it fundamentally just can't do the "last mile", pretty much ever.

I live in a suburb in North Texas. I walk out my door with the stroller and my kids. There's a bus stop super close by that can easily load a stroller (all busses are wheelchair accessible). I take that to the train station or the bus goes to the library or several other parks and rec centers. The train stops a very short walk to several museums, the convention center, the airport, the zoo has its own train station, the hockey/basketball arena has its own stop, etc. And this is all in an area where the mass transit isn't even that great.

The transit doesn't go everywhere we want to go. I agree that's the biggest pain point. But I truly don't understand the logic that it's bad for kids. My kids ride often, and they love it. What kid hates trains?

America used to have fairly everpresent public transport. Every city, including tiny ones, had public transport because the very concept of industrialization requires cities with lots of people in a small area that can easily get to work.

This absurd notion that it "doesn't make sense" for america is propaganda. Not only does it make plenty of sense in America, it was essential to the development of America!

We had robust, reliable, used by everyone public transport before we had trains! Our local agricultural fair shows off horse drawn busses that used to run in a microscopic but 300 year old agricultural community every single year! They even had instructions about how to behave to not upset the poor woman sitting next to your dirty worker self!

Public transport was essential to the north being industrialized enough to defeat the south in the civil war. Every former mill town in new england had robust public transport to keep the mills full of labor.

It was only with significant lobbying and marketing from GM and Ford that America suddenly decided that all this public transport infrastructure that we had for generations "doesn't make sense here" and they even helped rip it all up!

Read a history book.

It's frankly laughable. If public transport "didn't work" in the US, we would never have been able to industrialize before the car. But we did. We did it before the train