Yes, even the subways in NYC were built and operated by private companies (there were two, and they competed).
So, I don't think you can blame the shift from private to public for this. It's not that black and white. I think the car lobby has been a much bigger factor in driving both the construction of highways, suburbs, and destruction of local tram networks across most cities in the US. This did not happen in Europe.
I was in San Francisco a few months ago. The public transport there is pretty bad compared to what I'm used to in Berlin (clean, fast, efficient, etc.). The local muni trains are tiny and infrequent and you basically have to step over hords of homeless people to get into them. I was kind of shocked to see a 1 car muni show up after waiting for that for close to 15 minutes at Powel station. It's like they're not even trying.
Whether it would work other places I have no idea but we certainly have a data point that privatizing can work.
Here in Paris, public transit is run by the state since the war and works really well. It's going to be open to private concessions in a few years (buses first, subway in 20 or 30 years) because of European regulations, I'm not sure it will change for the better...
Governments are different. What works in France may not work in NYC for all sorts of reasons. For better or worse, the US federal government and most state and local governments are not good at running anything in an efficient manner.
I don’t think this is an adequate complete explanation.
- private ownership of automobiles in the U.S. took off
much more than in Europe
- the States did not put much emphasis on public transit
- the States invested in roads
- so Americans have long had an alternative to bad
public transit: just drive
- European countries put up a lot of impediments to
private automobile usage: high taxes, limited road
investment(? guessing on this one)
- so the cities had reduced incentives to providing
decent public transit, unlike Europe, where bad public
transit would have been fatal to many political careers
just due to the lack of alternatives
Maybe that's all wrong. I'd like to hear what others have to say about this.
Parts of the US where density is high, like the Northeast, or areas around Chicago or Seattle, did and do have rather decent mass transit, much / most of it initially privately started, that is, seen as lucrative, in high demand.
Most of US railroads were, and are, cargo-oriented. They haul a lot, but passenger trains are few, except in metro areas. Again, in dense areas like those around Philadelphia / NYC / Boston, commuter trains are a norm.
But once density lowers, keeping up train infrastructure becomes unprofitable, and can only be sustained bu subsidies. Even countries with very high train penetration and very high average popular density, like Japan, sometimes have to stop subsidizing lines to some stations where ridership is too small, and close them.
In US in particular, land is abundant in most of the territory, and home ownership is seen as a status symbol and an investment, so "proper cities" with sufficient density do not form, or form partially, with a lot of city territory being effectively suburbs. This makes investment-heavy public transit not a great option; buses suffice, since roads are already present.
All comes down to priorities and fairness. Majority of governments and companies don’t have either
For example, last october the bank of japan owned 74% of all publicly traded companies. And it has only been buying more since.
Japan is a strange failed-capitalist state sleepwalking into unintentional(?) socialism. Impossible to make a coherent point about a situation like that.
I don't think the situation itself is incoherent, just your comment.
> Japan is a strange failed-capitalist state
Is it? Who says?