I'm not trying to change your opinion (HN is not the place to change one you clearly hold very strongly), but as someone who lives in NYC and spent 4 years livi

I'm not trying to change your opinion (HN is not the place to change one you clearly hold very strongly), but as someone who lives in NYC and spent 4 years living in Seattle (I moved away in 2014), I will happily say that the article you posted has nearly no correlation to your earlier points about light rail, and that the NYC Subway is an amazing piece of (partially) publicly funded work that has shaped NYC and the surrounding region in innumerable positive ways. There are about 1.7 billion rides taken on it every year with over 200 miles of track. It'd be an understatement to say that the city could not exist the way it does now without it - autonomous vehicles won't get the sheer number of people moved every morning and every night that the subway does. A full order of magnitude more people take the subway on a daily basis than there are taxi rides, all for a maximum of $2.75 regardless of how far they're traveling. It might not be the best thing for Seattle (personally, I am a big proponent), but a blanket distaste for light rail is antithetical to what has proven fundamental for cities around the world. As far as spending public money, there are already efficiency concerns (something that your article definitely demonstrates) - I'm curious how you think public money could help fund technology that fundamentally does not exist today? Is that not a higher risk for future technology?