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> The new private operators didn't bother with unprofitable but socially-valuable routes, which local governments felt obliged to serve or subsidise. That's ex

> The new private operators didn't bother with unprofitable but socially-valuable routes, which local governments felt obliged to serve or subsidise. That's exactly how it should be. A lot of people have the idea that bus operators should be forced to drive the unprofitable routes in order to be allowed to drive the profitable ones. This would work if buses were literally the only way to get around. Since they are not, what it does is drive up the cost of public transport and make it less appealing. In Finland, it eventually caused the prices to rise so high, that it was generally cheaper to drive. This is socially disastrous. If there is a route that is not profitable to run, you should not expect a company to run it. The free market should manage the profitable routes, and drive down the prices as low as they can go. Any socially valuable routes on top of those should be subsidized out of the taxes of the people they provide value to.

TulliusCicero 8y ago
The thing is, private transit has an incentive to go anywhere there's sufficient density of people. If buses don't want to go somewhere, it's probably because there aren't enough people to justify it there, which can be solved with zoning. Sometimes there are other issues too, like too much crime, but even then there's still something for the government to solve that would make it profitable for private transit.
marksbrown 8y ago
1. Bus passengers are not rational actors in the free market. They'll get on the first available. In routes with multiple services consumers will prefer to just buy a ticket like 'system one' in Manchester. 2. Frequency and reliability of service on a long term encourages take up. London has Overground trains run every 15 minutes regardless of user take up. Bus companies can't or won't offer service like that. 3. Bus users are poorer. Those of us who can afford to opt out of the market do so. That encourages decline. Externalities like air pollution, community access for the elderly are left to local government despite lack of political will or capital. Essentially I believe public transport should be encouraged as a common good that pays dividends in society as a whole.
- Tuna-Fish 8y ago
  > 1. Bus passengers are not rational actors in the free market. They'll get on the first available. Strongly disagree. That may be true if there is no good way of getting information, but once there is a website/app that lets you enter your source, destination and departure time, and which clearly lists all the options with their prices, people do effectively shop around and make rational choices about their routes. This has been shown to work pretty well in Finland.
  - amaccuish 8y ago
    Not anywhere else I know, and I've lived in many places. 99% of the time people get on the first bus that arrives. Only if it's their commute bus might they look at times and prices. The free market really doesn't work well with public transport, as shown by the mess that is our train system (UK).
    - ChrisSD 8y ago
      The UK train system isn't exactly a free market. The trains and tracks are all owned by the government. The government also decides who gets the contract to operate trains.
      - amaccuish 8y ago
        True, but I don't see how you can have a "free market" on a train track otherwise. You've got to schedule trains, you can't have them coming and going as the market reorganises. And there's little possibility of choice, there's usually only one reasonable route to get somewhere, people don't want to add 6 hours of their journey time, to go via an alternative route.
        gsnedders 8y ago
        There are competing operators in various places in Europe, the UK included. The clearest example is probably Hamburg-Köln-Express in Germany, which operates trains that take around the same time as the state-owned incumbent (DB Fernverkehr), but on older rolling stock for a lower price. The hard part is "how do you divide up the capacity on the infrastructure", but this is a problem that has clearly existed throughout the EU since 2007 (when there's been open access freight operators), though has in reality existed much longer (most international services, for example) hence track access and allocation being the subject of an EU directive all the way back in 1995.
rayiner 8y ago
Yes, and it should be this way for everything (bus routes, train lines, water, sewer, electricity, telecom, etc). The government should be the safety net, not the primary provider.
- willyt 8y ago
  The market does take care of this. No one builds the second sewerage system or railway on the same route, it’s a terrible investment. The first mover gets a monopoly, price gouging happens, public complains and the government steps in. Currently we have private water companies in the U.K. they don’t have their own pipes and they are supplying the same water at nearly the same price, the actual water is provided by another private water company which owns the pipes and has a monopoly which has to be heavily regulated by the government. The result is choice of 10 different companies which charge between say £995-£1005 for the same thing, it’s not an efficient use of my time @ £60/hr to deal with the phone calls and paperwork needed to choose a supplier, it feels like I’m being forced to take part in a stupid game making a purchasing decision for something which is essentially exactly the same regardless of who I buy it from. The trouble is that infrastructure is often a natural monopoly. Countries that provide thier citizens efficient hassle free infrastructure increase thier productivity relative to other countries by reducing the bureaucratic load on citizens. Britain has private trains, electricity, water, phone networks etc. It doesn’t seem to be working very well, for example our rail ticket prices have increased faster than the rest of Europe, our train operating costs per mile are higher than state run systems in other comparable countries. In general our productivity is pretty low compared to other similar countries in Europe despite working some of the longest hours, maybe all the stupid phone calls from utility companies are one of the reasons why.
hokus 8y ago
Let me debunk that for you. We want a system optimized for transportation. We do not want a system optimized for wealth extraction. Say someone is buying a house. He will look for the stuff he needs. If they have kids that have to go to school or if they cant drive for some reason they look at the bus and train schedule and kinda expect that service to be there the next month. How you imagine it actually doesn't happen. You don't get a substantial number of people with kids, old and disabled people moving to an area without public transport so that you can move in for the killer profits. Even if there is a bus it would be unreliable if profit rather than transportation is the goal. Its just like we don't wait until the entire region smells like human poop before we put the sewers in. Oh and no more internet and electricity for you! You are just not using enough of it to be relevant compared to urban centers! Meanwhile in the already overly crowded city centers real estate prices will explode and force families to live in tiny single room apartments. From a strict profit driven perspective utopia is now happening!
- Tuna-Fish 8y ago
  > Let me debunk that for you. Then why not debunk something I said instead of going off on a weird tangent that is orthogonal to it? > We want a system optimized for transportation. We do not want a system optimized for wealth extraction. Agreed. > Say someone is buying a house. He will look for the stuff he needs. If they have kids that have to go to school or if they cant drive for some reason they look at the bus and train schedule and kinda expect that service to be there the next month. Agreed. > How you imagine it actually doesn't happen. You don't get a substantial number of people with kids, old and disabled people moving to an area without public transport so that you can move in for the killer profits. Even if there is a bus it would be unreliable if profit rather than transportation is the goal. Who spoke anything about killer profits? To put it simply, in my proposal any place that could be a competitive market would be one (so profits are driven as low as possible), while any place that could not be would be subsidized. Regardless, this is entirely orthogonal to my point. What I railed against was the idea that public transport in areas with lots of demand should subsidize public transport in areas with low demand. This is an absolutely terrible idea, whether your public transport system is private or government-ran. It's bad, because it drives the cost of public transport up, and unless you ban private cars, it therefore also drives the incentive to use public transport down and the incentive to use a car up. Instead, since we want to optimize for transportation, we should drive the cost of public transport as low as possible. Especially in areas with high demand, simply because as they have more people, they matter more in reducing emissions and traffic. And do note that as low as possible will be lower in areas of high demand than in areas of low demand. For this task, I propose using an open, competitive market. You might like a government-ran system better. I think either approach might work, although I prefer my version because it is less fragile. The important part is that not a penny of the fare prices paid by people in high-demand areas should go to subsidizing service to people living in low-demand areas. Because having public transport in those low-demand areas is also socially good, any areas where a competitive market cannot work should probably have subsidized public transport. However, that subsidy should not come from other public transport, because that makes public transport worse where it matters and makes people drive cars instead, making traffic and pollution worse. If you look at my original post, I proposed subsidizing it from taxation. Have I now repeated my point enough times that you have understood it? I'd have repeated myself less, but I thought it necessary since if you actually had bothered to go read my original post, instead of ad-libbing your favorite strawman on it, this entire post would not have been necessary.

TulliusCicero 8y ago

The thing is, private transit has an incentive to go anywhere there's sufficient density of people. If buses don't want to go somewhere, it's probably because there aren't enough people to justify it there, which can be solved with zoning. Sometimes there are other issues too, like too much crime, but even then there's still something for the government to solve that would make it profitable for private transit.

marksbrown 8y ago

1. Bus passengers are not rational actors in the free market. They'll get on the first available. In routes with multiple services consumers will prefer to just buy a ticket like 'system one' in Manchester. 2. Frequency and reliability of service on a long term encourages take up. London has Overground trains run every 15 minutes regardless of user take up. Bus companies can't or won't offer service like that. 3. Bus users are poorer. Those of us who can afford to opt out of the market do so. That encourages decline. Externalities like air pollution, community access for the elderly are left to local government despite lack of political will or capital. Essentially I believe public transport should be encouraged as a common good that pays dividends in society as a whole.

Tuna-Fish 8y ago
> 1. Bus passengers are not rational actors in the free market. They'll get on the first available. Strongly disagree. That may be true if there is no good way of getting information, but once there is a website/app that lets you enter your source, destination and departure time, and which clearly lists all the options with their prices, people do effectively shop around and make rational choices about their routes. This has been shown to work pretty well in Finland.
- amaccuish 8y ago
  Not anywhere else I know, and I've lived in many places. 99% of the time people get on the first bus that arrives. Only if it's their commute bus might they look at times and prices. The free market really doesn't work well with public transport, as shown by the mess that is our train system (UK).
  - ChrisSD 8y ago
    The UK train system isn't exactly a free market. The trains and tracks are all owned by the government. The government also decides who gets the contract to operate trains.
    - amaccuish 8y ago
      True, but I don't see how you can have a "free market" on a train track otherwise. You've got to schedule trains, you can't have them coming and going as the market reorganises. And there's little possibility of choice, there's usually only one reasonable route to get somewhere, people don't want to add 6 hours of their journey time, to go via an alternative route.
      - gsnedders 8y ago
        There are competing operators in various places in Europe, the UK included. The clearest example is probably Hamburg-Köln-Express in Germany, which operates trains that take around the same time as the state-owned incumbent (DB Fernverkehr), but on older rolling stock for a lower price. The hard part is "how do you divide up the capacity on the infrastructure", but this is a problem that has clearly existed throughout the EU since 2007 (when there's been open access freight operators), though has in reality existed much longer (most international services, for example) hence track access and allocation being the subject of an EU directive all the way back in 1995.

rayiner 8y ago

Yes, and it should be this way for everything (bus routes, train lines, water, sewer, electricity, telecom, etc). The government should be the safety net, not the primary provider.

willyt 8y ago
The market does take care of this. No one builds the second sewerage system or railway on the same route, it’s a terrible investment. The first mover gets a monopoly, price gouging happens, public complains and the government steps in. Currently we have private water companies in the U.K. they don’t have their own pipes and they are supplying the same water at nearly the same price, the actual water is provided by another private water company which owns the pipes and has a monopoly which has to be heavily regulated by the government. The result is choice of 10 different companies which charge between say £995-£1005 for the same thing, it’s not an efficient use of my time @ £60/hr to deal with the phone calls and paperwork needed to choose a supplier, it feels like I’m being forced to take part in a stupid game making a purchasing decision for something which is essentially exactly the same regardless of who I buy it from. The trouble is that infrastructure is often a natural monopoly. Countries that provide thier citizens efficient hassle free infrastructure increase thier productivity relative to other countries by reducing the bureaucratic load on citizens. Britain has private trains, electricity, water, phone networks etc. It doesn’t seem to be working very well, for example our rail ticket prices have increased faster than the rest of Europe, our train operating costs per mile are higher than state run systems in other comparable countries. In general our productivity is pretty low compared to other similar countries in Europe despite working some of the longest hours, maybe all the stupid phone calls from utility companies are one of the reasons why.

hokus 8y ago

Let me debunk that for you. We want a system optimized for transportation. We do not want a system optimized for wealth extraction. Say someone is buying a house. He will look for the stuff he needs. If they have kids that have to go to school or if they cant drive for some reason they look at the bus and train schedule and kinda expect that service to be there the next month. How you imagine it actually doesn't happen. You don't get a substantial number of people with kids, old and disabled people moving to an area without public transport so that you can move in for the killer profits. Even if there is a bus it would be unreliable if profit rather than transportation is the goal. Its just like we don't wait until the entire region smells like human poop before we put the sewers in. Oh and no more internet and electricity for you! You are just not using enough of it to be relevant compared to urban centers! Meanwhile in the already overly crowded city centers real estate prices will explode and force families to live in tiny single room apartments. From a strict profit driven perspective utopia is now happening!

Tuna-Fish 8y ago
> Let me debunk that for you. Then why not debunk something I said instead of going off on a weird tangent that is orthogonal to it? > We want a system optimized for transportation. We do not want a system optimized for wealth extraction. Agreed. > Say someone is buying a house. He will look for the stuff he needs. If they have kids that have to go to school or if they cant drive for some reason they look at the bus and train schedule and kinda expect that service to be there the next month. Agreed. > How you imagine it actually doesn't happen. You don't get a substantial number of people with kids, old and disabled people moving to an area without public transport so that you can move in for the killer profits. Even if there is a bus it would be unreliable if profit rather than transportation is the goal. Who spoke anything about killer profits? To put it simply, in my proposal any place that could be a competitive market would be one (so profits are driven as low as possible), while any place that could not be would be subsidized. Regardless, this is entirely orthogonal to my point. What I railed against was the idea that public transport in areas with lots of demand should subsidize public transport in areas with low demand. This is an absolutely terrible idea, whether your public transport system is private or government-ran. It's bad, because it drives the cost of public transport up, and unless you ban private cars, it therefore also drives the incentive to use public transport down and the incentive to use a car up. Instead, since we want to optimize for transportation, we should drive the cost of public transport as low as possible. Especially in areas with high demand, simply because as they have more people, they matter more in reducing emissions and traffic. And do note that as low as possible will be lower in areas of high demand than in areas of low demand. For this task, I propose using an open, competitive market. You might like a government-ran system better. I think either approach might work, although I prefer my version because it is less fragile. The important part is that not a penny of the fare prices paid by people in high-demand areas should go to subsidizing service to people living in low-demand areas. Because having public transport in those low-demand areas is also socially good, any areas where a competitive market cannot work should probably have subsidized public transport. However, that subsidy should not come from other public transport, because that makes public transport worse where it matters and makes people drive cars instead, making traffic and pollution worse. If you look at my original post, I proposed subsidizing it from taxation. Have I now repeated my point enough times that you have understood it? I'd have repeated myself less, but I thought it necessary since if you actually had bothered to go read my original post, instead of ad-libbing your favorite strawman on it, this entire post would not have been necessary.