[ItsJason]

Don't forget no incentive to be efficient or innovate better techniques / technologies on the part of both the city as a whole and individual employees. Government is the least accountable of all organizations and therefore the least effective at any given task.

[chasd00]

I'm not sure what DFW and TXDOT do right but they routinely bring projects in on time and on budget (if not under). Two large projects that come to mind is the HighFive and Grapevine Connector. Both were huge and the High Five made headlines for some new bridge making machine the contractor invented. Whatever they're doing it seems to be working.

[jaccarmac]

The projects may be on time and under budget, but from a citizen's perspective the transportation situation in DFW is excruciating. Endless construction, confusing junctions, deceptively labeled toll roads, and an NTTA site that won't let you use secure passwords (or security questions) to register. Give me fewer freeways and more public transit options any day, thanks.

[mnd999]

Nobody doing critical infrastructure, public or private will be allowed to go under. Look at the privatised rail companies in the UK or the banks in 2008 for examples of this. Competition and markets definitely do raise standards where that competition is fair and genuine and well regulated. Usually though, privatisation results in state awarded monopolies where little more gets done than before and costs rise because of the need to show a profit or bail out accrued losses because at the end of the day, the infrastructure has to keep running.

Maybe we can create a marketplace for bidding on infrastructure work job by job and maybe, it could be profitable for everyone. I’m not so sure though.

[cnorthwood]

Many private rail operators in the UK have been allowed to collapse, UK gov has set up "operators of last resort" which are run by the government to take over services when that happens. Pre-pandemic, the East Coast Mainline and Northern operations were run by them after the private operators walked away on the verge of collapsing

[mnd999]

Precisely, they were bailed out at the government’s expense. The trains are still running.

[RhodoYolo]

They have the opposite incentive. At a company (A good one), if you try something risky (New technology) and it doesn't 100% pan out, you can cut your losses. In a system with low level buyers managing the contract and alot of higher ups able to say 'no' you get this self defeating cycle. However, Elon was able to bully his way into contracts with his solution (Boring Company) cause: A.) he's famous, B.) He's protested to the GAO a number of times when he didn't get his way. (SpaceX, and original chicago build)