The “Waymo Will Make Transit Obsolete” Argument

In the US and Canada we are seeing ever more explicit messaging that advocates letting public transit wither into irrelevance. I’m growing more concerned about this angle in particular: (The author of this post appears to work in optics for Tesla’s autonomous vehicle technology.) If you recoil from this post, let me assure you that its argument is very, very compelling to many people. In many transport-technology circles it’s taken for granted. It also resonates generally with the daily life of many people who live in the suburbs, see mostly empty buses go by, and have used autonomous taxis enough to see their potential. An argument that generally resonates with someone’s experience is going to be more powerful, no matter how wrong or misleading it is. So I want to lay out, as respectfully as I can, all the ways this argument is wrong. I hope this is useful for you as you engage with this argument in your own conversations. The argument does not apply to dense cities, where the…