i sure wouldn't mind some vc-subsidized underground trains.
maybe if they became competitive rapid transit operators as well, the world could become a better place
maybe if they became competitive rapid transit operators as well, the world could become a better place
Which New York system? The New York MTA is the result of consolidating multiple, unprofitable systems (e.g. LIRR, New Haven, Staten Island). Most were snatched out of the jaws of bankruptcy by the government as commuter service just isn't profitable much of the time. Let's not forget that the private rapid transit (BMT and IRT) didn't work out so well either (bankruptcy and poorly thought out contracts) and eventually was acquired by New York city.
That is not to say you can't have private systems that work (Tokyo, Hong Kong). New York just isn't a particularly good example.
The real problem is putting operations and verification in the same hat - public or private. Private transit systems work well when government regulators have the power to set and enforce a strict SLA. They fail without oversight. Same with public systems. When the operational and regulatory agency are the same, it becomes hard to penalize failures.
Tokyo Metro is owned by... the national and local government.
From Wikipedia: [1]
The Japan Railways Group, more commonly known as JR Group (JRグループ Jeiāru Gurūpu), consists of seven for-profit companies that took over most of the assets and operations of the government-owned Japanese National Railways on April 1, 1987. Most of the liability of the JNR was assumed by the JNR Settlement Corporation.
Granted, that not every experience is abyssimal, but in my experience most train riding experiences in the UK are pretty terrible.
Filthy trains with partially massive undercapacity at sky high prices. Delays, cancelled trains and you - the passenger - is just left out to dry.
Infrastructure is also problematic, like an underabundance of ticket machines, let alone ticket selling staff at stations, etc.
It's also interesting to note that Japan rail companies can keep prices reasonable by making major parts of their income via real estate.
Germany's national broadcaster Deutsche Welle produced an excellent documentary looking at the exact same scenario you described. [0]
It looked into the possibility of making short-haul transportation (focusing primarily on Hyperloop) virtually free with just one caveat: a precondition that users share all their private data that advertisers might find valuable -- free ride in exchange for ad-targetable data -- scary and intriguing at the same time.
Targeting is about maximizing profits for the advertisers, it's not about maximizing value to you. If they can use targeting to take value from you in order to give it to themselves, they will. For instance, you could be bombarded with targeted ads for product A when you'd really be happier with product B. You can contrive scenarios where ad targeting is a win-win, but those scenarios are misleading because they go against the underlying incentives.
I wouldn't mind a neutral, personalized product recommendation engine, but that's not what ad targeting is.
The point isn't if the companies behave responsibly or not. Google for example has behaved responsibly with user data, exemplary in fact and I'm sure they'll continue to do so. Yet companies like Google are and will continue to be a danger for everything you know and love.
It's not how you use the data that's problematic, although companies like Facebook should suffer for their blunders, but rather that the data exists in the first place.
Are you part of a minority? Do you have some weird sexual preference or an affair? Are you a woman or gay? Are your religious views mainstream? Have you ever traveled to an Arab country or to Israel? All of these, in the right context, can put your life at risk. It's all an issue of place and timing.
You can also imagine more benign usage, like insurance companies raising their rates or banks calculating your credit score based on where you travel or your movie preferences. Heck, that's already happening.
Yes, many companies can behave responsibly. They can do so today, but what happens tomorrow, or how about in 10 years from now? What happens when those companies are being bought by bigger, less responsible ones. It happened before and it will keep happening ;-)
All the information collected in service of figuring out what to advertise to you will ultimately be used for all sorts of things many of which could be to your disadvantage.
In the end you wont even know why you were denied that car loan, that job, that place to live, why you weren't deemed credible by the cops or why you were sentenced to the maximum instead of offered probation. The oracle just told the car company, the employer, the landlord, the cops, and the prosecutor what to do at different junctures based decisions that not even the people running the computer can fully explain.
The process was very controversial at the time, and still is, and its success is hotly debated – with the claimed benefits including a reduced cost to the taxpayer, lower fares, improved customer service, and more investment. Despite opposition from the Labour Party, who gained power in 1997 under Tony Blair, the process has never been reversed wholesale by any later government, and the system remains largely unaltered. A significant change came in 2001 with the collapse of Railtrack, which saw its assets passed to the state-owned Network Rail (NR), with track maintenance also brought in-house under NR in 2004. The regulatory structures have also subsequently changed.
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/07/britains-rai...
Citylab
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/09/why-britains-...
Science Direct
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S015599821...
https://www.ft.com/content/d82848ca-f7ba-11e7-88f7-5465a6ce1...
>There is a growing consensus among both executives and industry experts as well as the public that Britain’s unique attempt to create competition on Britain’s rail network has not delivered.
>While it has led to more services, and encouraged more users to pay higher prices, it has not unleashed the productivity improvement necessary both to upgrade the network and stabilise the network’s finances.
>Over the same period, for instance, London’s state-owned metro network, Transport for London, has grown just as quickly and delivered much more state-of-the-art investment.