Is there anywhere to compare the wages, credentialing, and insurance of those drivers to those of a city's bus system?
It's easy to earn a profit when you don't pay taxes or have to worry about liability insurance.
It's easy to earn a profit when you don't pay taxes or have to worry about liability insurance.
(I would also describe the minibus as poorly maintained, but that’s by European standards — I was really surprised by the poor condition of American vehicles on each of my three visits, and it didn’t seem significantly worse than an American vehicle).
If this jitneys are really worse, there is no need to forbid them, municipal buses will outcompete jitneys.
For example, someone can undercut you on price by taking risky shortcuts. Therefore your product or service won't sell, but as a society, it's better for everyone that certain standards are met. Hence, regulations on electrical work and plumbing, etc. Same thing with driver's training and sleep minimums.
Real life example is the recent bus crashes in New York City from overworked or underpaid Chinatown buses.
UPD: But yes, they do have some paperwork. Its relevance is open to the debate. However, same applies to any paper coming out of public bus system.
Regulation also costs society money, indirectly taken from your wallet. You spend a lot of money without even solving a problem, because there's no certificate for honest person.
I would say, regulation costs 10x of cleaning up afterwards, which you still have to do. I would wait for the first offence if it was me.
If anything, driver of private vehicle cares more about their vehicle, it being private. Who cares for public ones?
That's how it starts. But then one bus driver figures that if he gets together a loan, he's able to buy a bunch of buses and hire a bunch of drivers and scale up his income.
Next thing you know, he's trying to evade liability when one of his dodgy buses has an accident, or he's trying to avoid repaying the loan, or he's cheaping out on driver skill. If the whole house of cards falls down, he sets up another shell company via a relative, transfers the assets across via a sale, and continues on his merry way.
The private bus owner with the well-maintained bus goes out of business because the he's outcompeted by the scale efficiencies of the fly by night operator.
Other than that, you could write same things about bakeries and not buses. But we still have a lot of inexpensive private bakeries around.