
The End of Public Transit? - grzm
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/10/public-transportation-uber-chariot/505658/?single_page=true
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rwhitman
People tend to forget that many of the most effective public transit systems
were originally built out by private companies and then acquired by
governments after the private company went bankrupt. A good chunk of the
public transit systems on the East Coast at least are the result of the
railroad boom & bust at the turn of the 20th century. Transportation at scale,
is not all that profitable in the long run. Yet people still depend on it.
That's why government is involved in the first place.

It's probably not a bad pattern - let private companies innovate and rapidly
build up the new networks and then have public administrators step in when the
private sector fails to turn a profit.

Reading a related article, about "super commuters" who use the Megabus to
commute to NYC from Philadelphia ( [http://www.villagevoice.com/news/meet-
phillys-super-commuter...](http://www.villagevoice.com/news/meet-phillys-
super-commuters-who-take-the-bus-to-nyc-every-single-day-9277453) ) - it's
another example of a private company filling in a gap in public transit
infrastructure, albeit less high-tech. Might lead to improvements of the
Amtrak Northeast Corridor at some point, or dedicated BRT lanes on I-95, who
knows. Either way it's a private business demonstrating increased demand, and
the public sector will eventually catch up.

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tbihl
Uber works in the US because we're trying to solve a problem that is often
separate from the ones transit solves. Transit needs density and fixes much of
the congestion that comes from density. In most of the US the density just
isn't there. Or there's a dense core, but people don't live in dense places,
so the transit would have to connect the dense core to the vast, diffuse web
around it.

~~~
gozur88
Taxis have existed forever. The "problem" Uber solves is the revenue stream
cities have gotten from taxi services.

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TheCoelacanth
How much of this is actually the private sector doing something cheaper and
how much is startups using VC funds provide service for less than it costs
them?

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yladiz
> The End of Public Transit? > Start-ups are proving more efficient than
> government in areas like transportation. Should some services be privatized?

As usual, the answer to a headline is no.

Transportation is not something I trust to private entities without major
government oversight. And in general, even with that oversight private
entities primarily look to make a profit, which the government isn't as
concerned about (e.g. the city of Townsville isn't concerned with shareholders
like Megacorp Inc. is). I think public-private partnerships work well -- see
Japan's JR, Korea's Korail -- but completely privatized transportation would
be a detriment to society because the priorities of profit vs need would be
skewed.

For example, I can imagine a future where "private" transit (the private
version of public transit) is ordered by phone, but will only pick you up if
enough people want it in a specific area. This kind of thing happens a lot:
look at how many bus stops are passed by later at night in SF. I can also
imagine that if public transit became private, some bus lines would stop
running at certain times because it's less profitable, because profit is a
major concern in a company.

I also don't like the idea that transportation isn't essential and therefore
should be given to private companies, as alluded to in this article: "Rather
than spending millions to operate multiple transit lines and modes—while
losing money—the government can spend less and leave the headaches of running
those systems to someone else. It can use the savings to pay for other,
essential, government services." For many people, transportation is an
essential service, one stop removed from the base needs such as food and
shelter. I'm maybe being a little pedantic about the wording, but I would
argue that transportation is essential, albeit less essential than something
like running water.

It's easy to forget that a lot of the services that exist in SF around
transportation are heavily VC funded, and are running in the red most of the
time (look at Lyft, Uber). This lulls us into a false sense of security
thinking that, "this is cheap, it will stay cheap forever." Most of these
services are subsidized by VC money and when that money starts to dwindle and
profit becomes a bigger concern, prices will go up and the equation isn't as
simple as it might seem now.

