https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bj3b3w/the-worst-commute

The subway is in a perpetual state of slow-motion collapse in New York, so one of the nation's most reputable magazines saw fit to publish a proposal to replace it with luxury autonomous cars, scooters, and an endless stream of advertisements. Aboveground traffic is worse than ever in LA and Chicago, so both those cities' mayors called in the preeminent CEO of for-profit future tech ideation to fix the snarl—Elon Musk's Boring Company is already drilling tunnels underneath Los Angeles, and has just won a contract to connect O'Hare Airport with central Chicago. The company insists the massive project will cost less than $1 billion, and is reportedly building it free of charge to the city, provided it can reap the revenue from "the system’s transit fees and any money generated by advertisements, branding and in-vehicle sales."

Believe it or not, that last bit of news dropped long after the author of this week's Terraform piece— Aaron Gordon, the Village Voice's transit reporter and the scribe behind Signal Problems, a weekly newsletter about the New York Subway—submitted this story, which, chillingly, imagines a near future in which the subway has devolved from reliable public good into a private, tiered subscription model service where, well, you'll see. Enjoy. -the ed