Fair enough, but I still think the underlying problem of on demand transportation is already solved by friends/taxis/uber/planning, it is merely a different bre

Fair enough, but I still think the underlying problem of on demand transportation is already solved by friends/taxis/uber/planning, it is merely a different breakdown, you take out the human component and replace it with a machine. As someone who had problem with Google Services and was not able to contact anyone (no, the help pages did not work) it seems as a pipe dream, but maybe I am wrong and people will embrace it. Or you need an actual operator who can be called and you are back to square one. For that money I feel a fundamentally different solution should emerge than a mere augmentation - if at all. For 2, it is the same. Public transportation is a more efficient solution already. I'm from Europe, so I might have a different view on this, but it works really well here.