I think this article actually makes quite a fresh and interesting point, after the first few paragraphs that sound like stock self-driving skepticism. The author is pointing out that imagining self-driving cars of the same form-factor and niche as the human-driven cars today is a fallacy on par with a 1990s futurist imagining the internet as simply a way to send letters faster. The point is that changes to the technological landscape as momentous as self-driving rarely are as simple as 1:1 replacement of the technology that existed before: the self-driving car is not unattainable, but it is a red herring.

Given this, I don't really know why he mentions the challenges involved in self-driving and his skepticism thereof -- it seems to me that his autonomous "rovers" and "software trains" face basically all of the same challenges as a self-driving sedan would.

Overall I applaud the imagination that the author applies, bringing together the threads of autonomous vehicles, micromobility, and lingering anxieties from COVID into a set of bold claims about the future of urban transit.

What I am curious about is whether the future he paints ("micro-sprawl"; "walking is passé") is one people find compelling and desirable. I think he's basically right that the underlying market forces will lead us there in the next couple of decades absent strong action from municipal governments, but is this the right way to model cities of the future, or are we sleepwalking into another Robert Moses style disastrous reimagining of the urban fabric? Personally I'm undecided.