I'm all for limiting rid share vehicles and better wages for drivers, but they need to dump a shit ton of time and money into the rail system, both the subway and intercity. Fix Penn Station, and get the tracks up to spec! That should be the #1 priority for city transport infrastructure.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
(The city froze their rates until they were no longer able to improve services, then the city took them over.)
You could say the same for the national railway network, it's a state company and it didn't prevent investments and improvements (high speed trains).
When one have lived for decades with the same nationalized system, one can't imagine what the alternative might be like. But we know from other industries. E.g., telecoms. The UK nationalized its telephone industry in 1912(!). The rest of the world basically followed suit (the U.S. didn't, but we gave AT&T a monopoly that tended to limit innovation in the same sort of way), then in the 90s the whole world privatized and/or deregulated telecoms and... wow, what a boom resulted! And yet very few people who are aware of that case will even think of applying the same approach to other typically-nationalized industries.
It's always interesting to see what gets nationalized. It seems to be the biggest, most notable, locally culturally valued industry that the relevant politicians have the power to nationalize. National governments tend nationalize big things, like telecoms, utilities, steel manufacturing, etc.
In the U.S. the Federal government has not had the ability / constitutional power to do this (see the Steel Cases from 1947), the States have and have had the constitutional power, but by dint of having so many of them in competition with each other, they've mostly been unable to use it, which leaves: the cities. In the U.S. every city has a "nationalized" public transit system.
But in many parts of the world things like city buses are entirely private sector industries (e.g., in Buenos Aires, which has an incredibly vast private bus network). That might be surprising, since in Argentina just about everything of note has been nationalized at times. It makes sense though: Argentina has a strong central government, and weak local governments, so the central government nationalizes things of national importance, and the local governments not so much.
Airlines were also deregulated and it hasn't really led to a "boom". Lots of bankruptcies and massive consolidation has made for a pretty poor flying experience.
==That might be surprising, since in Argentina just about everything of note has been nationalized at times. It makes sense though: Argentina has a strong central government, and weak local governments, so the central government nationalizes things of national importance, and the local governments not so much.==
Is this true? According to Reuters, the government of Buenos Aires raised bus prices in January 2018 [1].
"Bus, train and subway fares in the Buenos Aires area will rise this year, the Argentine government said on Wednesday, despite fears that the increases will stoke already high inflation.
Fare increases on buses and trains will start in February, Transportation Minister Guillermo Dietrich told reporters, with an initial average rise of around 35 percent."
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/argentina-transportation/bue...
EDIT: It makes sense to have the same fare for all bus lines in the same city.
EDIT: There has most certainly been a boom in air travel[0]! In Europe air travel is incredibly cheap, and much cheaper than comparable itineraries in the U.S. Now, air travel is generally harder to consume than, say, mobile phone service -- one needs no excuse to use mobile data, but to travel requires planning, time, and more money (especially for lodging), so it's not surprising to me if air travel has grown more slowly than telecoms (though I've not checked, but it's a fair assumption).
Don't count your chickens before they hatch. Of course when they do hatch you'll wish you had twice as many eggs to start with. Boston sure wishes it has the inner belt along with all the various rail projects it's forgone over the years.
For alternative examples: BART is not 24/7, and possibly sucks even more than MTA. CTA's 2 main lines are 24/7, but it's nearly 100% a 2-track system, and its biggest problem (IMO, anyway) is that the arrangement of seats inside the cars is so very desperately bonehaded.
Interested to hear what the other cities are. Chicago? San Fran?
edit: apparently SF is not representative of public transit in other cities in California.
I’ve lived in both downtown LA and Cambridge, and it’s really difficult to conduct life in LA relying primarily on local rail options. Whereas in metro Boston, it’s much easier to live car-free than to own a car. The subway and commuter rail are just a superior way to get around 99% of the time. I mean, it’s not the same degree of car-obsolescence as New York, but it’s much closer to New York in that regard than it is to the situation in LA.