train station.jpg

Train stations and mass transportation may become obsolete with the advent of the automated car.

(File Photo | The Jackson Citizen Patriot)

Last week, the Detroit Free Press revealed the old Willow Run bomber plant will be turned into a

. Last month,

it will be selling fully-autonomous cars within seven years. Google says they’ll be there in four.

This is "disruptive innovation," the phenomena by which a revolutionary product or service takes root quickly and rapidly alters the market and society. Robo-car may be the biggest ever. It will soon change our culture and politics beyond recognition.

Our brains are the most valuable commodity on Earth. Americans spend tens of billions of hours of brain-time each year on the numbingly menial task of keeping cars from hitting things. It is not possible to calculate the monetary value of creating productive passengers who can work, play, or sleep away those hours they now spend as traffic drones. But that value is probably going to be high enough to swiftly pull most of us away from the steering wheel, and lead many of us to voluntarily give up auto ownership itself.

Personal cars spend most of their time parked wherever the owner is located. That’s not necessary in a robo-car world. One vehicle can spend a whole day catering to numerous passengers. Rental agencies could sell time or miles as cell phone contracts are now sold. If most of us can have a ride brought to us within a reasonable period of time after asking for it, we probably won’t pay for the added hassle of car ownership.

The cost of renting will likely be less than current car ownership costs. Devoid of human error, robo-cars will largely do away with collisions and need just a fraction of today’s auto insurance spending. Neither owning or driving them, we won’t care if they’re uniformly ugly and underpowered, yet ruthlessly fuel efficient.

Paying for buses and passenger trains with pricey unionized drivers may soon be as sensible as buying Kodak film for a cell phone camera. Giving safer and more convenient mobility to the poor may be done more easily with vouchers for a robo-car contract. And no need to travel from a train station in Lansing to a train station in Chicago when an e-chauffeur will run you from your front lawn to the hotel door sooner, cheaper and on your schedule.

It will be interesting to see when (or if) today's big-spending public transit disciples give up their fight.



Drunk driving deaths will vanish, along with traffic tickets and much else we pay cops to patrol. There will be a good case for legalizing open intoxicants in these vehicles, saloons will be able to serve us late into the night, and the politics of public morality will get wild.

I spend three hours a week traveling to visit the pretty lady in my life. If I could do my day job or write these columns rather than watch the road, I’d make those trips twice as often. People will live much further from their workplaces; friends and family when commuting can become fully productive time. Children won’t be waiting until age 16 to turn in their bicycles.

Having demanded sharply increased fuel economy for decades, environmentalists will swiftly regret its impact as households consume vastly more miles and buy more fuel. The politics of energy will become even more impassioned.

Needing few parking lots, personal garages or even residential streets, our current land use debates will look ancient by comparison.



But if history is any guide, at least one Detroit automaker will be left behind, and Congress will hold another bailout debate to remind us of our heritage.

Ken Braun was a legislative aide for a Republican lawmaker in the Michigan House and worked for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Most recently he has assisted in a start-up effort to encourage employers to provide economic education to employees, and is the director of policy for one such effort: InformationStation.org. His employer is not responsible for what he says here ... or in Spartan Stadium on game days.