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Comment by Spivak | Hacker News Reader

Trains don’t solve the last mile problem in metropolitan areas. It’s just not economically feasible to constantly run trains or buses that cover a metropolitan area with less than 1 mile spreads and acceptable intervals.

I’m being generous that ‘walk a mile’ at source and destination would pass muster for people with difficulties.

Making our infrastructure for cars better seems like a much better solution honestly.

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Walk a mile at source and destination also adds 30 to 40 minutes to your trip.

Taxis, shuttles, rideshare are a thing.

Right, but the point is that all the solutions to the last mile problem are... cars. Which is fine but if you're going to do that then what's the advantage of not using it the whole way? The throughput of highways is great, there's no schedule to follow, you don't have congestion and surge pricing at popular stops with hundreds of people trying to hail a cab at rush hour, and if you're price conscious gas is cheap and you can find perfectly usable cars for less than $1k.

And you can use your car for more than just your daily commute.

Parking is the main difference.

It seems like a perfect opportunity to let the free market solve the last mile problem.

I mean the market has been solving the all mile problem with cars for the last 50 years. Outside of the downtown areas of ~5 cities in the US there isn't really a problem to solve.

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