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Comment by _m8fo | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if it is actually possible to make money in the commoditized transportation business. Virtually all government transportation organizations lose money -- luckily for them they're governmentally funded (MBTA loses money [1], which is relevant since there was recently a bus service in Boston that shut down).

[1] https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/02/28/mbta-shrinks-it...

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There are quite a few exceptions to this. Sort the second table on this page by %age: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio

FWIW TfL in London has to break even across all modes (operationally, at least) by 2018.

You'll notice there is an exceptionally high correlation between operational returns and city density.

I wonder if they factor in the broader economic benefits of public transport (or costs of a lack thereof) into 'breaking even'. Cut bus services, more people drive, take longer to get to work, are now stressed, walk less, put more strain on the health care system. I'm guessing they don't, being politicians and all...

No, they don't. This is purely financial.

> Virtually all government transportation organizations lose money

So do highways — they're all investments which make things better for private citizens and businesses. You have to look at the total economic impact — i.e. not having public transit would entail either trillion-dollar freeway construction projects, the economic hit of massive traffic jams, or some combination of the two.

The more interesting question is if they provide greater value to the taxpayer than they cost.

If you live in any first world city (aka not the US), you know that's the case.

I realize you're trying to be snarky, but it's worth pointing out that the original definition of "First World" was the set of countries economically/politically aligned with the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World

I love that the second world is implicitly the soviet countries, but it's disappeared from common use.

Even better, a lot of those countries in central Europe went ahead and leapfrogged the "first world" in terms of infrastructure and digital services.

First world is literally defined as aligning with the US. I have to guess you've never been to NYC, Chicago, San Fran, LA, etc if you want to snarkily dismiss them as "not first world"

Everywhere in the US outside of the borough of Manhattan has fairly awful public transit options. Feel free to sub in "developed country" to make the joke work better.

Is public transit the only measure of a developed city?

Perhaps public transit fulfills a different role in a country where car ownership is aspirational and currently at < 10% vs a country where car ownership is the norm and >90%

Los Angeles and Manhattan are still in the same country? The quality of public transport is related to density, public money and proper policies not the % of owned cars.

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