Isn't it stunning that cities around the world manage to have efficient transit systems that are good at getting people from where they are to where they need to be, even though everyone might be starting and ending at different points?

WHAT IS THIS MAGIC??????

I realize Americans' brains probably explode trying to envision that, so sorry for the mess.

The typical American attitude: "I will do whatever I want to do because it makes my life better!" without thinking one step ahead and realizing it will make your life and everyone else's life worse.

Honestly, I've pretty much written off the USA at this point.

There are great videos of a first-person view of a tram route in Amsterdam. What immediately strikes me is how little traffic there is on the road and how the few cars on the road can drive totally unimpeded by traffic.

This is how a city should work.

The transit in my city does not stink. I guess maybe people up here have better hygiene.

Safety isn't the issue. Traffic congestion is the far bigger problem.

And will that tram pick up and deliver each of those 130 people directly at the doors of their homes or workplaces?

Nope. But in my experience, in well-designed cities, you rarely need to walk more than about 250 m to 500 m on either end of the trip, and if you're working in a dense urban core, you often get delivered right to your building or very close to it.

I realize that "walking" is considered poisonous in the United States. My apologies.

Obviously, when I talk about transit, I'm talking within cities, not rural areas.

A well-designed transit network will get you from A to B directly or with at most one transfer. And OMG, you might have to walk 700 m or so... the horror!!!!!

Oh also... if you have a job, quit it. And let us know how the "things" you need magically appear at your doorstep in a puff of fairy dust.

And sure, "working from car" makes so much more sense than working from a room that's not moving. Egads! We should get rid of office buildings entirely and put everyone in cars to work!

If your transit sucks, complain to your politicians. Or move somewhere with decent transit. I guarantee that a city with decent transit will have a better quality of life in many other ways too.

What hooey. A Toronto streetcar (tram) is 28m long and can hold 130 people.

A Waymo taxi is probably around 4.5m long and can hold 5 people. So 28m worth of Waymo taxis bumper-to-bumper with zero clearance between them can hold 30 people... less than one-quarter of the tram. In reality, you're probably only going to get 15-20 people in the Waymos because of the clearance between them.

Individual vehicles are just about the worst way to move a lot of people efficiently.

They're solving a different problem than the pathetic, execrable transit systems in most US cities do.

In properly-designed cities with properly-designed transit systems, transit is the most convenient way to get around a city.

Sure, have your self-driving RV. When everyone has one of those, you won't wake up at the destination. You'll wake up 20km from where you started because of self-driving RV gridlock.

AI is bad enough, but these robotaxis are a scourge on society. They add to traffic, take away transit ridership, and don't even give humans a job, even a gig job.

Great stuff! I'll have my AI agents listen to them so I don't need to waste my time.

Nobody in their right mind objects to AI applications in medicine, etc. But these are typically not generative AI systems. They are more traditional pattern-recognition systems with a specific area of "expertise".

What I object to is the Generative AI industry, which (as I've written) is fraudulent, immoral and dangerous. It's that industry that people are booing.

I provide a link to my article because it's quicker than repeating the points each time this comes up.