> Big-city transit has an equilibrium point, and it is incredibly stable. Every serious transit city in the world ends up in the same place
You're cherry-picking your own examples. It worked in Iowa City.
Y Combinator and much of SV would be out of business if innovators followed that thinking. One reason is that people do come up with new ideas; that's how the world changes. The other is that the world changes, and what didn't work before now works - costs change and value changes, and now it's worthwhile. For example, with congestion pricing and other rapidly increasong costs of NYC car ownership, there's more value in free transit.
Oddly, it's the thinking advocated by many HN posts, denigrating the innovation under discussion as impossible, useless, etc.
> without sustainability, a political shift will kill it
That can be said of many things. A political shift could kill military funding in the US.
You're cherry-picking your own examples. It worked in Iowa City.
Y Combinator and much of SV would be out of business if innovators followed that thinking. One reason is that people do come up with new ideas; that's how the world changes. The other is that the world changes, and what didn't work before now works - costs change and value changes, and now it's worthwhile. For example, with congestion pricing and other rapidly increasong costs of NYC car ownership, there's more value in free transit.
Oddly, it's the thinking advocated by many HN posts, denigrating the innovation under discussion as impossible, useless, etc.
> without sustainability, a political shift will kill it
That can be said of many things. A political shift could kill military funding in the US.