Like many tech entrepreneurs, Elon Musk is trying to reinvent public transit. But his comments at an event last month, as reported by Aarian Marshall in Wired, made many people wonder whether he understands the business he’s trying to disrupt:

“I think public transport is painful. It sucks. Why do you want to get on something with a lot of other people, that doesn’t leave where you want it to leave, doesn’t start where you want it to start, doesn’t end where you want it to end? And it doesn’t go all the time.”

“It’s a pain in the ass,” he continued. “That’s why everyone doesn’t like it. And there’s like a bunch of random strangers, one of who might be a serial killer, OK, great. And so that’s why people like individualized transport, that goes where you want, when you want.”

Musk is a symptom, not a cause.  You find that most “Great Thinkers” in mass transit are PEOPLE WHO WOULD NEVER USE MASS TRANSIT.

It’s Robert Moses all over again.