Women Pay More for Transit: This Week's Future of Cars News

The advent of new mobility options is supposed to be a great equalizer. Hailing a self-driving taxi will allow teens, people with disabilities, and the older population to get around as easily as people with driving licenses and their own cars. Scooters and other last-mile solutions like shared cars or dockless bikes should help people who live in communities underserved by regular public transit options. But this week some inequalities have been highlighted, which designers of this utopian future vision might want to fix. For one thing, women pay more than men in New York City to move around, for a variety of complex reasons. For another, Uber and Lyft have started loyalty programs that reward power users with perks like fancier cars, potentially creating classes of riders.