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Comment by greggman | Hacker News Reader

I'd really like to know what the true costs are.

Are Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore all massively subsidizing their mass transit? Do they have enough riders that they're profitable? Are they more or less efficient in how the manage them?

How about Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Antwerp, Koln, Barcelona, etc... which are all an order of magnitude smaller than the previously mentioned cities but all have pretty good public transportation.

These last cities are all on the same order of size as SF. About 1 million people each and yet they have vastly better public transportation than SF

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London Underground funding info is here:

https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/how-we-work/how-we-ar...

About 40% comes from fares. About 25% is government subsidies. The rest is a mixture of borrowing, advertising/rental income, a central London road tax, and 8% is funding for Crossrail (but this represents pure infrastructure investment so does not affect the steady state).

I have to admit, having reviewed the figures, I am a bit surprised and concerned at the level of borrowing involved.

In Japan, in addition to public and quasi-public train companies, there are many private train and bus companies which are completely profitable with zero support from taxpayers. This won't work in non-densely-populated areas, but it's feasible in cities.

This article is a wall of words, but describes the details pretty well. The short version is that the private companies diversify their operations by buying land around (and above) their stations and developing it in conjunction with their train and bus lines.

http://www.ejrcf.or.jp/jrtr/jrtr10/f02_sai.html

In Sweden, most public transit agencies cover somewhere around 50% of costs through ticket sales, with the rest being paid by local governments.

AFAIK aside from perhaps planning considerations, there aren't really any other hidden subsidies (e.g. while the rail they run trains on may be owned by the public rail agency, they still have to pay usage fees)

In some of those areas you're talking about huge population density as well, so it becomes more effective.

I live in Minnesota, where suburb living is very popular. We don't have very dense areas of population that a typical transit system would cover.

Hong Kong's subway is profitable and is the best subway I've ever ridden. (fast, clean, easy to navigate)

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