It’s a simple calculation. Would you want your local (almost certainly public) transit operator to take over your electric service? I’d suspect in the vast majority of places, the answer would be no.
A public entity is not restricted by the need to maximize profits and can fully concentrate on providing the best possible service within the budget.
Both public and private organizations can have efficiency challenges, which for the most part correlate with their size.
A private company that is granted a monopoly will tend to exhibit the worst of both worlds, maximizing private profits while providing minimal service and putting all risks onto the public sector.
Whether a company is for or non profit is almost beside the point. What made utilities work was that the private corp ran the business and the government board provided oversight. This eventually broke down as people are people whether they work at a for profit or non profit organization.
If the board becomes filled with people with a different agenda than providing cheap, safe, reliable power, then they will take actions that, over the long term, will make it impossible for the utility to do those things. The signs of this are not allowing new transmission lines or power plants, and directing that the company use specific technologies that are not part of the (cheaper/safer/more reliable) core values.
A public entity may have more mechanisms for transparency, whereas a private entity can keep also maintain appearances of good customer service, and as long as they're making profits the shareholders may not care about what's happening under the hood.
Until things get so bad that the private entity implodes, but by that time it's too late.
Public transit in America most often the answer would be no. But public transit of say the rest of the world with multi-billions of dollars invested over the years into the public transit infrastructure leading to public owned and operated highly functional transit systems.
A for profit company will invest when it makes sense from a bottom line perspective. A public non-profit without corruption will invest when it makes sense from a public good perspective.
Not if they are a monopoly.
What an idea!
I would love Transport for London to take over electric and water and internet provision in London, yep. And I feel like most everyone in the UK would prefer the trains to be renationalised.
The EU railway directive (2012) "separating management of railway operation and infrastructure from the provision of railway transport services, separation of accounts being compulsory and organizational or institutional separation being optional.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_European_Railway_Direct...
When I was a kid I got most places using public transportation and it was fine.
Because politicians cut its budget while requiring 24/7 operation, not because the subway operator doesn't have ~profit motive~
The MTA's dysfunction and inefficiency scale to accomodate whatever budget they are given and this will continue until city and state politicians are actually held accountable for its performance.
The organization's problems have very very little to do with budget constraints.
* https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/1/14112776/ne...
Chicago seems to be doing okay, or at least much better than NYC:
* https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/18/nyregion/chicago-l-train-...
The problems of the MTA are unique to the MTA itself (AFAICT), and should not necessarily be extrapolated to other places.
You answer the question of what are the "benefits" with essentially another vocab word, and a single word at that, "incentives".
Also, surely you understand that the New York subway system’s problems cannot simply be chalked up to it being public?