We believe in progress. For many kinds of mobility, we can see what progress is going to be. For long-range air travel, it is the return of supersonic flight. For short-range air travel, it's electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing flight (eVTOL), known colloquially as 'air taxi'. For personal vehicles and for ridehail, it's driving automation.

What would progress in public transit be?

I've written a series of posts on my Substack to answer this question on my Substack. It's in four parts and the sum is ~10K words. The short version is:

Firstly, we need to understand the problem. In my view, the problem is 'the Endless Emergency': a bad equilibrium where transit agencies rely on public subsidy to operate, but that reliance leads to raft of warped incentives. The result is local equilibrum where operators provide service that ranges from 'terrible' to 'barely adequate' and never improves; and neither cutting or increasing the budget can change the situation. The first essay explored this dynamic in detail, showing how operators’ dependence on subsidy creates perpetual crisis.

One solution is moving to full cost recovery. The second essay considered the idea of reorganizing transit agencies as regulated utilities, allowing them to charge what the service truly costs, would help to break this trap.

The third essay examines how we could also reshape our cities to provide density at transit stations. Doing so would not only make our cities more liveable, but would also help to make transit financially viable, by ensuring there are enough customers to support the service.

Finally, the fourth essay explores how vehicle automation could dramatically reduce operating costs, and so help agencies achieve full cost recovery. Rail automation is proven and cost-effective; bus automation holds enormous promise; and replacing low-ridership routes with automated on-demand robotaxi service is appealing in many circumstances. These approaches range from 'someday soon' to 'we could have done this decades ago'.

In short, techno-optimists should advocate for institutional reform of operators; zoning reform in cities; and technological reform wherever possible, beginning with automation of rail systems. By pursuing all of them, we can travel a path that leads to transit systems that can sustain themselves financially while providing the service our cities need...

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