> You say this intriguing thing: "The segways would be for intra-area transportation, the driverless cars for inter-area." Yeah, this is the root of our disagr

> You say this intriguing thing: "The segways would be for intra-area transportation, the driverless cars for inter-area." Yeah, this is the root of our disagreement. As I see it, the reason this doesn't happen now is a matter of convenience. As things stand now, there's the friction of transitioning from car to segway. In a fully automated world, I see that friction largely disappearing. You get out of the car, it goes away. The segway is waiting for you. It delivers you and goes away itself. There's very little friction. It's true this only makes sense in certain kinds of living situations. Suburbs seem unlikely to go this way (though there was a brief trend last decade to more pedestrian-y suburban town center development). But for urban areas, this kind of development increases what people like about urban living, and decreases what they don't like. I don't think people know they want it, but I also don't think it's something they've been given much to consider. When they have, like 3rd St. Promenade in Santa Monica, it's been hugely popular. Segways would allow you to scale that up considerably, and expand it beyond retail and entertainment, possibly to an entire city center. We're in agreement about the future of passenger rail. It looks bleak decades down the line. Interestingly, Mayor Garcetti of Los Angeles said much the same just a few months ago. He wondered in public if it made much sense to keep building massive rail projects given that automated cars were coming. http://laist.com/2014/09/30/mayor_garcetti_wants_to_turn_westwo.php http://laist.com/2014/09/30/mayor_garcetti_wants_to_turn_wes... "How do you spend billions of dollars on fixed rail when we might not own cars in this city in a decade or a decade and a half?"