The show is a Mr. Roger’s universe spin-off, an animated cartoon about Daniel Tiger. Well, about Daniel Tiger the younger—the son of the depressive, orphaned Daniel Stripèd Tiger puppet from the original Neighborhood of Make-Believe. The elder Daniel has grown up psychologically healthy despite his traumatic youth, thank goodness. He apparently reunited with his Québecois father, Grand-Pere (who was Collette’s grandfather in the original show, so continuity is suspect), and had a son, also named Daniel, whose misadventures in toddlerdom the new series recounts. The show also reprises other Make-Believe characters and their broods.

Trolley’s role is reprised too, but, the streetcar’s function is entirely different from its precursor. When Daniel and his family want to go somewhere, they simply walk outside to catch Trolley. It’s always already there, waiting, empty. Daniel’s posse climbs aboard and off they go. And new Trolley is no longer bound by rails, but conveys itself, driverless, along the modest roads and pathways of the neighborhood. It deposits its passengers directly at their destination, then disappears.

In other words, Trolley isn’t a trolley, at all. It’s an Uber. An autonomous Uber, even.

Trolley is also a very important character in Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, one far more central than in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Not only does it convey Daniel and his family and friends around the (seemingly small and walkable?) neighborhood, but also it serves as the object of Daniel’s total obsession. He’s got a trolley bed. A trolley toy. Trolley bath towels. Daniel worships trolley (Ding! Ding!). Which means, metaphorically at least, that Daniel worships a hypothetical autonomous car hailing service rather than a mode of public transit.

It might seem harmless, like a young boy interested in fire trucks. But when I think about Trolley’s impact on my own early respect for trains and buses, I wonder if it’s something more.

If today’s Trolley is an introduction to automated car hailing rather than to public transit, the tenor of Daniel’s obsession changes. Trolley ceases to become a symbol of public transit, and instead becomes an emblem of privatized, technologized car hailing. It would be like a kid unpacking a Hot Wheels car in order to enjoy the glee of playing Uber. (Which, let’s face it, probably already happens somewhere.)

Trolley’s potential impact on the show’s very young viewers changes too. It’s not that original-Trolley somehow inspired a life of committed public transit use. Rather, that it offered an inroad, so to speak, for understanding the existence and function of trains and buses. That may not sound like much, but it meant that just about every American kid of the 1970s and 80s, most of whom were utterly surrounded by cars, got an early peek at an alternative.