Well you don't have to ride with the poors and you pay direct instead of taxes for maximum inefficiency of money for value.

It's a shared taxi/marshrutka/dollar van/jitney ... Too many names but common across the world especially where the government is incapable of organizing proper public transport.

Just repackaged for techbros.

Busses are going to get privatized....that's this administrations goal, privatize everything.

i'm guessing it would serve routes not already served by busses. in which case it could be useful if you can share them.

it used to annoy me that i couldnt get a bus to the next town over from my hometown when i lived there. i had to get a bus 40 mins in the wrong direction and get a second bus from there into work.

Theoretically they can use the data collected from the app to optimize pickup locations and routes and be flexible as demand changes, since people can be directed to new pickup locations easily. Whether or not that's true and how much it costs will be the deciding factor.

Is this not just a bus but worse?

Don't forget to tip!

You just know it’s going to be individual rail cars so we can have traffic jams on rails!

self-driving with signed waivers of liability in the terms and conditions

And what Excel is to every productivity app, and what email is every messenging service.

Public transit can be privatized and run for profits. Good example is Japan metro and train networks. Bad ones are bus routes in latinamerica.

if I had a nickle every time a techbro invented a bus or a train, I'd probably be able to afford a fucking bigmac

And then when people complain because its an inherently worse service, they resort to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and "just start your own company even though you have no capital" type bullshit.

It's like carcinisation for public transit.

Like a library but for travelling?

And put some guidelines in the road to assist with self driving. Maybe make them out of metal for improved durability. Then swap out the rubber-wheeled tires for some more efficient and less poluting conical metal wheels since we don't need to worry about them running on asphalt anymore.

Oooh. And as long as we have multiple carriages connected, we can add a walkway between them. Then instead of all of them being for passengers, they can subsidize the cost by having a car dedicated to selling snacks, or other items. You can literally buy your morning coffee from the road!

London has Uber Boats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Clippers

rural areas

That's the difference though - they're planning for cities (and they're a private company). German cities mostly have decent to very good public transport. I lived in a very rural area (a handful of buses every weekday) for the first 20 years of my life and then moved to the city at least 100 years ago. I'm still in awe of the transport system here (as shitty as it sometimes is).