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The public transit system used to be privately owned and operated. Then the cities took over and kicked out the private sector. Now we have terrible public tr

The public transit system used to be privately owned and operated. Then the cities took over and kicked out the private sector. Now we have terrible public transit. Yes, even the subways in NYC were built and operated by private companies (there were two, and they competed).

torgian 8y ago
Quite right. Japan has excellent rail systems and they’re all owned by private corporations, albeit with government oversight. However, public trans can be done right, such as the case in mainland China which is state owned. All comes down to priorities and fairness. Majority of governments and companies don’t have either
- awakeasleep 8y ago
  Gotta be careful talking about private companies in japan. For example, last october the bank of japan owned 74% of all publicly traded companies. And it has only been buying more since. Japan is a strange failed-capitalist state sleepwalking into unintentional(?) socialism. Impossible to make a coherent point about a situation like that.
  - amaccuish 8y ago
    > Impossible to make a coherent point about a situation like that. I don't think the situation itself is incoherent, just your comment. > Japan is a strange failed-capitalist state Is it? Who says?
jacobolus 8y ago
There are also many countries/cities with excellent publicly owned transit, various excellent public services in the US, and many terrible privately owned services (including transit services) around the world. I don’t think this is an adequate complete explanation.
jillesvangurp 8y ago
Most european cities and countries have government run public transport or semi private monopolies running the transport. Privatization is usually singled out as the root cause of the sorry state of the rail service in e.g. the UK. Basically it leads to companies cherry picking the most lucrative routes and shutting down the rest. So, I don't think you can blame the shift from private to public for this. It's not that black and white. I think the car lobby has been a much bigger factor in driving both the construction of highways, suburbs, and destruction of local tram networks across most cities in the US. This did not happen in Europe. I was in San Francisco a few months ago. The public transport there is pretty bad compared to what I'm used to in Berlin (clean, fast, efficient, etc.). The local muni trains are tiny and infrequent and you basically have to step over hords of homeless people to get into them. I was kind of shocked to see a 1 car muni show up after waiting for that for close to 15 minutes at Powel station. It's like they're not even trying.
- Kalium 8y ago
  They're trying very hard in SF! It's just that the goals Muni is incentivized to achieve might not always be in full alignment with the ones customers might prefer.
adrianN 8y ago
Public transit, like most infrastructure, shouldn't be privatized imho. We don't want infrastructure that serves only those who can pay. I'm perfectly fine with a public transit system that needs subsidies. We heavily subsidize cars by providing cheap or free parking in cities, why not public transport?
- dnautics 8y ago
  Singapore has privatized transit. Quality of service is exceptionally high and it's one of the cheapest rail services in the world, precisely because the economic pressure encourages the lines to favor QOS and volume.
  - jmiserez 8y ago
    The MRT and LRT are owned by the Land Transport Authority, Ministry of Transport, i.e. the government. What transit are you referring to?
    - dnautics 8y ago
      Mrt was private until last year, so jury's out on where the quality goes. Comfortdelgro runs three subway lines, IIRC.
- tokyodude 8y ago
  one of the best public transit in the world is often claimed to be Japan's. It was privatized and went from not functioning to the envy of the world. Whether it would work other places I have no idea but we certainly have a data point that privatizing can work.
etiennemarcel 8y ago
That's a very American point of view. Here in Paris, public transit is run by the state since the war and works really well. It's going to be open to private concessions in a few years (buses first, subway in 20 or 30 years) because of European regulations, I'm not sure it will change for the better...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- lylecubed 8y ago
  Yes, the topic of the thread is US transit. Saying "this works fine in Europe" is at best a non-starter. Governments are different. What works in France may not work in NYC for all sorts of reasons. For better or worse, the US federal government and most state and local governments are not good at running anything in an efficient manner.
  - nine_k 8y ago
    In NYC in particular, the subway is run by the New York State-owned corporation, MTA. It's not that bad, but it's known for slowness and huge cost of any projects it undertakes. Half of its budget is subsidies.
ant6n 8y ago
The NYC subways were built via public-private-partnerships, in what would nowadays be called a DBF(O)M (design-build-finance-operate-maintain) model.
cryptonector 8y ago
I like the comments about how public ownership and operation of public transit works in Europe. I'm curious as to why, and I have some ideas: - private ownership of automobiles in the U.S. took off much more than in Europe - the States did not put much emphasis on public transit - the States invested in roads - so Americans have long had an alternative to bad public transit: just drive - European countries put up a lot of impediments to private automobile usage: high taxes, limited road investment(? guessing on this one) - so the cities had reduced incentives to providing decent public transit, unlike Europe, where bad public transit would have been fatal to many political careers just due to the lack of alternatives There's also the fact that geography meant that private automobile usage in the U.S. had to be higher than in Europe... Maybe that's all wrong. I'd like to hear what others have to say about this.
- nine_k 8y ago
  Most of Europe is way denser than most of the US. Parts of the US where density is high, like the Northeast, or areas around Chicago or Seattle, did and do have rather decent mass transit, much / most of it initially privately started, that is, seen as lucrative, in high demand. Most of US railroads were, and are, cargo-oriented. They haul a lot, but passenger trains are few, except in metro areas. Again, in dense areas like those around Philadelphia / NYC / Boston, commuter trains are a norm. But once density lowers, keeping up train infrastructure becomes unprofitable, and can only be sustained bu subsidies. Even countries with very high train penetration and very high average popular density, like Japan, sometimes have to stop subsidizing lines to some stations where ridership is too small, and close them. In US in particular, land is abundant in most of the territory, and home ownership is seen as a status symbol and an investment, so "proper cities" with sufficient density do not form, or form partially, with a lot of city territory being effectively suburbs. This makes investment-heavy public transit not a great option; buses suffice, since roads are already present.

torgian 8y ago

Quite right. Japan has excellent rail systems and they’re all owned by private corporations, albeit with government oversight. However, public trans can be done right, such as the case in mainland China which is state owned. All comes down to priorities and fairness. Majority of governments and companies don’t have either

awakeasleep 8y ago
Gotta be careful talking about private companies in japan. For example, last october the bank of japan owned 74% of all publicly traded companies. And it has only been buying more since. Japan is a strange failed-capitalist state sleepwalking into unintentional(?) socialism. Impossible to make a coherent point about a situation like that.
- amaccuish 8y ago
  > Impossible to make a coherent point about a situation like that. I don't think the situation itself is incoherent, just your comment. > Japan is a strange failed-capitalist state Is it? Who says?

jacobolus 8y ago

There are also many countries/cities with excellent publicly owned transit, various excellent public services in the US, and many terrible privately owned services (including transit services) around the world. I don’t think this is an adequate complete explanation.

jillesvangurp 8y ago

Most european cities and countries have government run public transport or semi private monopolies running the transport. Privatization is usually singled out as the root cause of the sorry state of the rail service in e.g. the UK. Basically it leads to companies cherry picking the most lucrative routes and shutting down the rest. So, I don't think you can blame the shift from private to public for this. It's not that black and white. I think the car lobby has been a much bigger factor in driving both the construction of highways, suburbs, and destruction of local tram networks across most cities in the US. This did not happen in Europe. I was in San Francisco a few months ago. The public transport there is pretty bad compared to what I'm used to in Berlin (clean, fast, efficient, etc.). The local muni trains are tiny and infrequent and you basically have to step over hords of homeless people to get into them. I was kind of shocked to see a 1 car muni show up after waiting for that for close to 15 minutes at Powel station. It's like they're not even trying.

Kalium 8y ago
They're trying very hard in SF! It's just that the goals Muni is incentivized to achieve might not always be in full alignment with the ones customers might prefer.

adrianN 8y ago

Public transit, like most infrastructure, shouldn't be privatized imho. We don't want infrastructure that serves only those who can pay. I'm perfectly fine with a public transit system that needs subsidies. We heavily subsidize cars by providing cheap or free parking in cities, why not public transport?

dnautics 8y ago
Singapore has privatized transit. Quality of service is exceptionally high and it's one of the cheapest rail services in the world, precisely because the economic pressure encourages the lines to favor QOS and volume.
- jmiserez 8y ago
  The MRT and LRT are owned by the Land Transport Authority, Ministry of Transport, i.e. the government. What transit are you referring to?
  - dnautics 8y ago
    Mrt was private until last year, so jury's out on where the quality goes. Comfortdelgro runs three subway lines, IIRC.
tokyodude 8y ago
one of the best public transit in the world is often claimed to be Japan's. It was privatized and went from not functioning to the envy of the world. Whether it would work other places I have no idea but we certainly have a data point that privatizing can work.

etiennemarcel 8y ago

That's a very American point of view. Here in Paris, public transit is run by the state since the war and works really well. It's going to be open to private concessions in a few years (buses first, subway in 20 or 30 years) because of European regulations, I'm not sure it will change for the better...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
lylecubed 8y ago
Yes, the topic of the thread is US transit. Saying "this works fine in Europe" is at best a non-starter. Governments are different. What works in France may not work in NYC for all sorts of reasons. For better or worse, the US federal government and most state and local governments are not good at running anything in an efficient manner.
- nine_k 8y ago
  In NYC in particular, the subway is run by the New York State-owned corporation, MTA. It's not that bad, but it's known for slowness and huge cost of any projects it undertakes. Half of its budget is subsidies.

ant6n 8y ago

The NYC subways were built via public-private-partnerships, in what would nowadays be called a DBF(O)M (design-build-finance-operate-maintain) model.

cryptonector 8y ago

I like the comments about how public ownership and operation of public transit works in Europe. I'm curious as to why, and I have some ideas: - private ownership of automobiles in the U.S. took off much more than in Europe - the States did not put much emphasis on public transit - the States invested in roads - so Americans have long had an alternative to bad public transit: just drive - European countries put up a lot of impediments to private automobile usage: high taxes, limited road investment(? guessing on this one) - so the cities had reduced incentives to providing decent public transit, unlike Europe, where bad public transit would have been fatal to many political careers just due to the lack of alternatives There's also the fact that geography meant that private automobile usage in the U.S. had to be higher than in Europe... Maybe that's all wrong. I'd like to hear what others have to say about this.

nine_k 8y ago
Most of Europe is way denser than most of the US. Parts of the US where density is high, like the Northeast, or areas around Chicago or Seattle, did and do have rather decent mass transit, much / most of it initially privately started, that is, seen as lucrative, in high demand. Most of US railroads were, and are, cargo-oriented. They haul a lot, but passenger trains are few, except in metro areas. Again, in dense areas like those around Philadelphia / NYC / Boston, commuter trains are a norm. But once density lowers, keeping up train infrastructure becomes unprofitable, and can only be sustained bu subsidies. Even countries with very high train penetration and very high average popular density, like Japan, sometimes have to stop subsidizing lines to some stations where ridership is too small, and close them. In US in particular, land is abundant in most of the territory, and home ownership is seen as a status symbol and an investment, so "proper cities" with sufficient density do not form, or form partially, with a lot of city territory being effectively suburbs. This makes investment-heavy public transit not a great option; buses suffice, since roads are already present.