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Of course they need to be profitable. A working public mass transport system is the sine qua non of dense cities. Dense cities reap many economic benefits so na

Of course they need to be profitable. A working public mass transport system is the sine qua non of dense cities. Dense cities reap many economic benefits so naturally the cost of providing mass transportation must be weighed as well. It's outright unsustainable to ignore the cost sinks of cities as much as it is to ignore the cost sinks of suburbs or rural areas.

igammarays 6y ago
Of course they should NOT be profitable, because remote routes are not profitable to operate, yet it is in everybody's interest to prevent overcrowding and excessive density. Give me one example of a successful metro that was built on "profitability". It may become profitable in the end, but only because the initial intention was public service, not profit. This kind of capitalistic short-term thinking over long-term public interest is precisely what is wrong with America today.
- choeger 6y ago
  "public service", my ass. The purpose of mass transit is to gather the cheap workforce from around the city so a banker can have their Starbucks coffee for about the same price as everywhere else, offices get cleaned properly, and millions of employees can waste hours every day rushing into their cubicles that have to be in some "representative" location so the CEO can jerk off with their golf buddies. The goal of ever denser cities is first and foremost to move the profits from the economic benefits of densification to rent seekers, in particular owners of ever scarcer real estate. Mass transit is a tool to make that possible. Mass transit is almost certainly profitable, if priced correctly. It enables massive value concentration. One could easily introduce a property tax on real estate to fund it. But right now the profiteers managed to argue that it is a "public good". As if square meter prices measured in the tenths of thousands of dollars are in any form normal. Just to make this crystal clear: No one would build a mass transit system to move around a few tourists or get the inhabitants from their apartments to the latest fancy restaurant. Mass transit exists to fill the city with a workforce it cannot or doesn't want to house properly.

igammarays 6y ago

Of course they should NOT be profitable, because remote routes are not profitable to operate, yet it is in everybody's interest to prevent overcrowding and excessive density. Give me one example of a successful metro that was built on "profitability". It may become profitable in the end, but only because the initial intention was public service, not profit. This kind of capitalistic short-term thinking over long-term public interest is precisely what is wrong with America today.

choeger 6y ago
"public service", my ass. The purpose of mass transit is to gather the cheap workforce from around the city so a banker can have their Starbucks coffee for about the same price as everywhere else, offices get cleaned properly, and millions of employees can waste hours every day rushing into their cubicles that have to be in some "representative" location so the CEO can jerk off with their golf buddies. The goal of ever denser cities is first and foremost to move the profits from the economic benefits of densification to rent seekers, in particular owners of ever scarcer real estate. Mass transit is a tool to make that possible. Mass transit is almost certainly profitable, if priced correctly. It enables massive value concentration. One could easily introduce a property tax on real estate to fund it. But right now the profiteers managed to argue that it is a "public good". As if square meter prices measured in the tenths of thousands of dollars are in any form normal. Just to make this crystal clear: No one would build a mass transit system to move around a few tourists or get the inhabitants from their apartments to the latest fancy restaurant. Mass transit exists to fill the city with a workforce it cannot or doesn't want to house properly.