Longer read for those interested in my peculiar obsessions. I'll just add that people too often confuse "will this be useful for me if it is implemented in a particular way that happens to benefit me?" which is basically "this might provide me with an extremely cheap on demand cab service" with is this generally a cost-effective thing which will be useful for lots of people?
Also, everybody loves to talk about the "last mile problem." The last mile is a 20 minute walk. The last half mile is a 10 minute walk. Unless your cheap cab is waiting for you at the station and whisks you home directly (which semi-flexible on demand routes will not), and the same to the station, you aren't going to save much time on that. Also, "the last mile problem" with car-sized vehicles faces the same problem as every other transit problem. We have a peak commute problem. It's called rush hour (or daily rush 4 hours, depending on where you live). Need a lot of microtransit at peak times specifically.
Sure robot cars will change all this. Well, some of this. The peak commute problem doesn't change. Let's talk when we have robot cars.
