In mid-July, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced that the L train, one of the main transit connections between Brooklyn and Manhattan, will close down in January 2019. During the 18-month outage, workers will address repairs necessitated by Hurricane Sandy damage. It’s a big problem for Brooklyn — and one of the largest disruptions in the subway system’s century-plus history.
But the timing of the shutdown presents a unique opportunity: to make New York’s rising tech hub a test bed for autonomous vehicles — specifically, an autonomous vehicle-based taxi system in the tract of Brooklyn served by the L
So what can we do?
Here’s how a rollout would work. New York City would invite one or more companies planning to test autonomous vehicles to deploy a fleet of autonomous taxis in Brooklyn — soon. The city could offer heavily subsidized rides to anyone wanting to cross to and from Manhattan.
Ah. "heavily subsidized." A cunning plan!
The grifters know that the public trough is the only way to keep this scam going. The fierce independence of the techbro!
And people wonder why I obsess about this stuff. Let technology that doesn't even exist solve a problem it wouldn't be capable of solving even if it did! With subsidies!