“Like many tech entrepreneurs, Elon Musk is trying to reinvent public transit,” writes Jarrett Walker for CityLab. “But his comments at an event last month, as reported by Aarian Marshall in Wired, made many people wonder whether he understands the business he’s trying to disrupt:” ‘I think public transport is painful. It sucks. Why do you want to get on something with a lot of other people, that doesn’t leave where you want it to leave, doesn’t start where you want it to start, doesn’t end where you want it to end? And it doesn’t go all the time.’ ‘It’s a pain in the ass,’ he continued. ‘That’s why everyone doesn’t like it. And there’s like a bunch of random strangers, one of who might be a serial killer, OK, great. And so that’s why people like individualized transport, that goes where you want, when you want.’ When the audience member responded that public transportation seemed to work in Japan, Musk shot back, ‘What, where they cram people in the subway? That doesn’t sound great.’ “These comments ignited a firestorm of criticism from transit advocates (myself included), and some thin-skinned replies from Musk. Urban planning guru Brent Toderian quickly created the hashtag #GreatThingsThatHappenedOnTransit, which is now gathering testimonials from people around the world about wonderful encounters they’d had with ‘a bunch of random strangers’ on buses and trains….” “Musk doesn’t want to share a vehicle with ‘a bunch of random strangers.’ But the presence of random strangers is what a city is, and what successful transit is. The unique achievement of transit is to transport so many people in so little space with so little labor. Crowding—however much it bothers some people—is the essence of transit’s success….” “So Musk can imply that there’s something wrong with transit because it’s too crowded—an example of the Yogi Berra fallacy—but cities and transit agencies shouldn’t care. If they’re crowded, they’re succeeding.”The Tesla CEO’s comments about public transportation triggered a firestorm of criticism. Here’s why.
