Google was aware of and blessed the research, and has been apprised of its results so that it can make changes and better secure Google Play against malicious individuals.
California doesn't want to change in order to be like Switzerland. What makes him think that we would? We don't see Southern California as a problem that needs to be fixed. We see it as an improvement over compacted cities.
The issue is that the United States was founded on the principal of expanding outward and populating as much territory as possible. This philosophy has proven to result in some huge drawbacks with outward expansion still financially incentivized as opposed to a focus on maintaining and supporting infrastructure. This has caused an extreme disparity in land use per person in relation to most european cities. As a result we see begin to see the core of many cities become dilapidated and unmaintained as well as a huge influx of systems to support the personal transit means of each individual that has become all but a necessity. Disregarding the impact of that many more vehicles on the roads, it becomes a lot easier for social segregations to be reinforced with no foreseeable future of remedying the gap.
I for one would like to see this discouraged as much as possible and would more than welcome alternatives to everyone securing their own means of personal transportation. I know I've digressed a bit from the topic of the article but I would say that google's attempts to make public transit more transparent and viable to someone who may have overlooked the option is a step in the right direction; even if they haven't hit the nail on the head.
In less than a century, computers will be making substantial progress on ... the overriding problem of war and peace. -- James Slagle