News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior by Spivak on Sunday October 15, 2017 @02:45PM (#15478524)
Or if we're a little more honest public transportation is an Inferior Good [1] that people stop using as soon as they have the means to.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferior_good

Re:New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior by dgacmu on Sunday October 15, 2017 @03:53PM (#15478952)
Not when it works well. I live about a mile from work. My kid goes to school perhaps 2mi from home. Mass transit has made it very easy for my family of three to downsize to one car. (We are not means-limited. It's fantastic to not have the extra crap to deal with from a second car.) When there's a thunderstorm or excessive ice, or I need to get home faster for whatever reason, the bus is great. But: I happen to live right off of a major bus corridor, so there's a bus every five minutes or so.

We use Lyft to fill in the gaps if something comes up that requires both adults to drive somewhere.

Mass transit plus a little bit of easily-available ride sharing _can_ be significantly better than car ownership. But...

Re:New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior by ghaff on Sunday October 15, 2017 @03:54PM (#15478958)
It is an inferior good in that usage decreases as income rises. But in some locations, mass transit (especially subway) can be a pretty good alternative to congested surface streets--especially outside of rush hour, not carrying luggage/groceries/etc.