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Comment by karthikb | Hacker News Reader

Suggest that you actually look at privately run transit infrastructure that exists today. Tokyo subway systems (JR, Tokyo Metro, Keisei) - all private. Or Hong Kong - MTR is private.

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.

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I think your point about operations and verification is spot on. However, it’s worth noting that Japan (less familiar with other countries) has tremendous cultural advantages over the US when it comes to privatizing infrastructure. Punctuality, cleanliness, attention to detail, engineering prowess, safety, collectivism — many things that lend themselves to a well-functioning transit system — are all deeply interwoven into Japanese history and culture in a way that is difficult to imagine being the case in America. Which isn’t to say that it couldn’t be successful here, but it’s not an equivalent set of circumstances.

Your definition of 'Private' is interesting.

Tokyo Metro is owned by... the national and local government.

Tokyo metro is one company of many that provide subway services in Tokyo. There’s also JR, Keisei, and several other companies. Some are fully private, some are joint ventures with the government - but key is that none of these companies have oversight power over themselves.

In theory there is separate oversight over public transit in the United States as well. In California the CPUC regulates, for example, Muni and BART while the CHP has oversight over agencies that use state and federal highways (the subset of the Muni fleet that runs down Van Ness and 19th Ave is under the purview of the CHP). In practice the regulators are feckless.

Not to nitpick. But JR is not really one company, even though you get the impression that it is, due to the homogenity of, for example signage, partially quite comparable rolling stock and a shared (extremely efficient) reservation system.

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Railways_Group

As a counter example look at privatisation of the UK rail system.

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.

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