Germany’s partial privatization of public transit, led to major issues like underinvestment, frequent delays, and high costs for passengers, underfunding, and profit-driven management.
Well, it’s more like the model was unsustainable. The trolley system was originally built by neighborhood builders as a neighborhood amenity to attract buyers. When the neighborhood was all sold up, the builder would hand the system over to the city, who would then fund the maintenance of the system via ? which was fine and dandy for a while because rail infra doesn’t need half the maintenance asphalt does, but once you had enough of these lines aging out and piling up maintenance issues all at once and the city having done almost no planning to fund said maintenance, the cities would reliably just say “fuck it, let people drive” rather than try pulling teeth via passing a tax or something. From here in 2025, I’m ready to send a terminator back in time at them over it, but I can see how they arrived there in the context of their time.
Right. Well, IIRC property tax is collected by the county and then sliced up and divvied out to different municipalities, which, also IIRC, then goes into the municipal general fund. If the city is stupid and doesn’t plan maintenance, and instead treats the rail as a free good, then when it comes time to keep up on it, it’s easier to just shrug and replace it with a business service.
What’s more is that you also had GM going around and basically taking the EEE approach to municipal transit by offering ridiculously cheap bus services to replace trams, only to end them a short while later. So, it’s not all on the cities, though one wishes they’d had the foresight to understand that private companies never do stuff out of the goodness of their hearts.
The problem is that if the profitable routes are private, who will run the unprofitable ones? This is effectively siphoning money away from the profitable public transit routes placing more of a burden on transit agencies.
That being said, even if it’s 50% cheaper than a normal uber I doubt anyone will use it.
There are actually more operators than just JR and Keisei, but transferring between any of them is usually very quick and painless if you have any of the major transportation network cards in Japan, or associated NFC app. Only tourists actually buy tickets at the machines.
However, it does tend to cost more than sticking to one operator.
Public transit can be privatized and run for profits. Good example is Japan metro and train networks. Bad ones are bus routes in latinamerica.
Germany’s partial privatization of public transit, led to major issues like underinvestment, frequent delays, and high costs for passengers, underfunding, and profit-driven management.
This alone explains pretty much every other problem
The trolley system in early 20th century US cities died due to issues related to privatization. It’s been done; doesn’t work.
Well, it’s more like the model was unsustainable. The trolley system was originally built by neighborhood builders as a neighborhood amenity to attract buyers. When the neighborhood was all sold up, the builder would hand the system over to the city, who would then fund the maintenance of the system via ? which was fine and dandy for a while because rail infra doesn’t need half the maintenance asphalt does, but once you had enough of these lines aging out and piling up maintenance issues all at once and the city having done almost no planning to fund said maintenance, the cities would reliably just say “fuck it, let people drive” rather than try pulling teeth via passing a tax or something. From here in 2025, I’m ready to send a terminator back in time at them over it, but I can see how they arrived there in the context of their time.
Via property tax. The same way local roads are maintained
Right. Well, IIRC property tax is collected by the county and then sliced up and divvied out to different municipalities, which, also IIRC, then goes into the municipal general fund. If the city is stupid and doesn’t plan maintenance, and instead treats the rail as a free good, then when it comes time to keep up on it, it’s easier to just shrug and replace it with a business service.
What’s more is that you also had GM going around and basically taking the EEE approach to municipal transit by offering ridiculously cheap bus services to replace trams, only to end them a short while later. So, it’s not all on the cities, though one wishes they’d had the foresight to understand that private companies never do stuff out of the goodness of their hearts.
The problem is that if the profitable routes are private, who will run the unprofitable ones? This is effectively siphoning money away from the profitable public transit routes placing more of a burden on transit agencies.
That being said, even if it’s 50% cheaper than a normal uber I doubt anyone will use it.
If there’s already public transport on the route, why would anyone chose a presumably more expensive Uber-bus?
If the timing is better and it’s cheap enough I’ve taken an uber to avoid 30+ minute bus waits before.
The fragmentation of railway companies is horrible to deal with. Tokyo is a mix between JR and Keisei and you need to buy a separate ticket for each.
At least they run really well.
There are actually more operators than just JR and Keisei, but transferring between any of them is usually very quick and painless if you have any of the major transportation network cards in Japan, or associated NFC app. Only tourists actually buy tickets at the machines.
However, it does tend to cost more than sticking to one operator.
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