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This is largely correct. Simple case: the local school district here in a suburb of Boston provides a school bus service. So did the one I attended in New York.
by dsr_ 8y ago
This is largely correct. Simple case: the local school district here in a suburb of Boston provides a school bus service. So did the one I attended in New York.
The one in NY owned a fleet of diesel buses, a central depot to put them in, a repair facility next to the depot, and paid administrators, mechanics and drivers. Every so often a wave of buses were replaced.
The one in MA pays a bus company that does all the same work. The bus company makes a profit. Interestingly, they aren't scaled -- this bus company serves this school district, period.
In theory, the MA school district could look for another vendor if the price got too high. In practice, every bus company is already at their capacity and could not expand to cover another district without a major capital infusion to fund another depot, repair shop, and more buses.
In any situation where one could reasonably argue that a private company could scale, one would have to also accept the argument that the government could scale at an advantage because they don't need to make a profit: depots and buses need to be fairly local, and while they can be consolidated to some extent, one might as well handle it as a multi-district service - a county or even state-wide.
Arguments based on a private company being more efficient because of competitive pressures don't work. There's no competitive pressure.
Arguments based on private companies being less corrupt don't work. Mismanagement happens everywhere.
When it comes to public services, privatization always means a handout to the owners.
- tialaramex 8y agoYou can also see this very easily in the UK. One city in the entire country has essentially all its transport infrastructure owned by the government (some of it is operated by private companies under license). In every other city they're a mess of private companies. Result: In that one city (it's London) the transport infrastructure works as an integrated whole and everywhere else it's just a bunch of assemble-it-yourself components. Private bus companies actually operate the buses in every city, but in London those companies have to work for the government, their contract says all the buses must look alike (they're painted red, if you've visited or thought of visiting London you can probably visualise one) and work alike (taking contactless cards) and so on, they're all part of a single system. In London you don't care which private company operates the bus you got on and pays the driver, it says "35" on the front, it's a 35 bus, sorted. In my city they're just three (or maybe four?) different private companies, different livery, their timetables aren't co-ordinated, they have different overlapping number schemes, and different fare schemes - if I have my City card but I'm on a Blue bus that's no good, I'll have to pay by credit card. Why? Because as in the US one of our political parties dogmatically believes that privatisation is better, and confronted with the fact that it doesn't work their answer is more privatisation. Nationally many people keep voting for them anyway. In London not so much.
- stordoff 8y agoI find it telling that I know the public transport better in London than my own city - it's just easier.