The term 'public transport' is generally defined as trains, buses, trams, or ferries, where 1. the vehicle is large, carrying many people, 2, it runs according to a schedule that the passengers must comply with, and 3. is usually state owned and operated. But this received definition seems to exclude passenger aircraft, such as when QANTAS was owned by the state, it fit all three of those criteria, yet was not generally regarded as being public transport. Similarly long distance coaches, taxis, nor privatised implementations of the above are not usually thought of as public transport. Why public transport should be defined in this way really only suits the unions for those modes of transport and the central planning lobbies that advocate for expansion of such services.

A more useful definition of public transport is any mode of transport where the passenger does not own the vehicle they are travelling in, and pay for the journey. Thus taxis should be considered public transport too.

The benefits that taxis have over scheduled services, like trains or buses, is immense:
1. Greater convenience of operating hours, available 24/7, even in small towns.
2. Greater convenience of schedules, in that they arrive when the passenger needs them, as opposed to the passenger having to comply with the mandated train or bus timetables.
3. Superior comfort, with more comfortable seating that isn't damaged or covered in graffiti.
4. Superior safety, unlike trains that are a magnet for gangs and drug dealers.
5. For larger groups of people they can be more economical than the train or bus that requires everyone to have an individual ticket.
6. Greater flexibility of routes, in that they pick you up at your own address, and take you to the exact address you want to go to, rather than the hopeful approximation at either end that trains and buses allow.
7. Greater convenience in directness of route, no need to wait around for connecting services.
8. Greater utility, in that you can easily carry large and heavy luggage such as shopping.
9. Privately owned and operated, with the only taxpayer subsidies being for road infrastructure which is the case for private vehicles anyway.
10. No additional road infrastructure needed on top of what has already been provided by the state.
11. Unlike rail and bus, there is little likelihood of unions being able to hold the public and economy to hostage by threatening to shut services down by striking for excessive pay and conditions.
12. The passenger and taxpayer is not burdened by convoluted and poorly implemented ticketing schemes that notoriously cost far in excess of any sane expectations for what a ticketing scheme should cost to deploy.
13. Speed, a taxi will get you to your destination much faster than trains or buses.

The downsides of taxis are:
1. Relatively expensive.
2. This expense is driven up by heavy regulation of the taxi industry (often at the behest of the entrenched market players themselves).
3. The other major expense component is that there is a high labour to customer ratio, where one driver is utilised by a single passenger at a time, as opposed to trains where one driver (and support staff) may be utilised by several hundred passengers at a time.

Until now little could be done about the expense of having individual drivers working taxis, but computer controlled cars are becoming a reality, and when they are perfected it will make possible a cheap, driverless taxi service.

A major experiment in driverless vehicles has been announced: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128639246&ft=1&f=1004

That their project is so ambitious, effectively crossing half the world, shows how advanced this technology already is, and the performance data they collect during this experiment will further progress again. The outcome is unavoidable as it is relentless; one day computer controlled drivers will be deemed far safer than human drivers.

Just as the taxi industry was the first to see the scaled economic benefits of hybrid engine vehicles, they too will be quick to see the scaled economic benefits of driverless vehicles, and their fleets of driverless vehicles will probably be most people's first direct experience of such vehicles.

Not only will it allow for cheaper services, but lack of human driver will free up an additional seat for larger groups of travellers.

Also, instead of subjecting the passenger to an absurd and bureaucratic ticketing system, their keycard or credit card will already be their ticket, and they can be rewarded with loyalty points for cheaper fares.

If the regulatory obstacles are swept away that block new market participants, cheaper service again can be expected. This may be harder to bring about though.

Given that this outcome is a certainty rather than a mere possibility, additional expenditure on expanding rail or tram infrastructure is very shortsighted. The most prudent strategy is to very quickly privatise all rail and tram infrastructure while it still has any commercial value at all, to get the best economic outcome for the taxpayer, while retaining ownership of the underlying land which when the train services are no longer needed, to convert into roads.

Once there are enough driverless vehicles in operation, speed limits will not have to apply to them due to their greater safety, and roads can be given over to their exclusive use so they can achieve speeds of 300km/h or greater. This will be an excellent use of rail corridors once trains are no longer viable and the tracks are ripped up.

Hence the short-term, luddite thinking of the Greens should be vigorously opposed: http://www.railpage.com.au/news-8034.htm

Just one more example of how the Greens offer yesterday's solutions for yesterday's problems.