[socalgal2]

Arguably the best transportation system in the world is in Japan. It's made from ~100 private and mostly private companies. For some reason, tax and spenders never seem to understand that.

Set up the incentives right as demonstrated it can work. Coversely, public transporation will always have funding issues because there is no way to setup the insentives.

[gruez]

>It's made from ~100 private and mostly private companies

how much state intervention/subsidies are those companies getting?

[ceejayoz]

Japan’s system didn’t start that way, though. They built the initial infrastructure via “tax and spend”.

[socalgal2]

JNR was public. Most of the other 99 were not

[dcow]

You have to pick one and stick to it. The mess of hybrid public private gets you the worst of both.

[Spooky23]

Not really. The Japanese public transportation system is analogous to employer sponsored healthcare in the US. The employers and employees get significant tax incentives to get employee commuter passes.

Ths US tax system makes capital intensive business difficult to operate in the private market. It’s one of the larger distorting influences in our economy. Most public transit is operated by authorities, which are public corporations with their own books and tax exempt bonding authority.

Based on your saying “tax and spend”, I assume you identify as a modern conservative. The tax and spend aspect is really the road system - one of the ways that Nixon tried to prop up the flailing economy was to invest billions into highway aid and projects. Roads = lots of oneshot construction jobs and local patronage.

Rural, exurban and suburban towns didn’t have broad paved highways until those programs took off, as states didn’t have the will or the dollars to fund them. Drive around upstate New York and you’ll see lots of “old state route XX” — all of those roads were built in the last 50 years, all paid for by external federal dollars. (And narrower than the ridiculous wide streets in subdivisions today)

[socalgal2]

> Not really.

Is really. The majority of systems, especially the larger ones, get no subsidies. Mostly the smaller rural ones get subsidies.

> I assume you identify as a modern conservative

you'd be wrong.

But I still bristle every time someone says we need public transporation when my favorite system I've used for decades is not public and is designed to be positive feedback loop. No public system can do that AFAICT because there's no way to set up the incentives. It's just an expense with indirect benefits, to easy to cut funding on and make it just a "for poor people who can't afford a car" system