Hacker News Reader

Comment by ry0ohki | Hacker News Reader

When people compare public transit systems, one thing to keep in mind. The ones you usually compare as world class: NYC, Chicago, London were all originally built by private companies (and later made public), while the crappier ones out there SF, Atlanta, Baltimore were built with public money from the start. The DC subway is one of the few decent ones I can think of that was built with public money from the get-go, but it had an incredible budget, and still fell way short of it's original plan.

View on HN

I don't understand how you assess the validity of your statement. Since you are talking about London as a world-class system, surely you should include Paris, Hong Kong, and Moscow. These were not "originally built by private companies."

A few days ago, CNN listed Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, London, Paris, Madrid, NYC, Tokyo, and Guangzhou as being in the top list of subway systems. At least some of those were started either by the government or by a government owned/funded company.

The US has a long history of preferring business solutions over government ones. Compare to 1800s France where large-scale engineering projects were seen as part of the government's domain. I therefore suspect that your observation reflects a US-centric view, where the default view seems to be that the government is incapable.

Also, there's a possible selection error. If all of the worst systems were "originally built by private companies" and only 40% of the world-class systems were done that way, then wouldn't that suggest that early government involvement leads to better systems?

Without that information, it's very hard to use your observation to make any sort of informed decision.

We were talking about a US city (my fault for bringing in London), so yes, I'm not sure you can compare the type of government owned organizations that are common in Asia to how our governments and infrastructure work.

I don't think that the issue should be between public and private companies building these systems. I believe the lack of engineers in the public sector is more likely to blame for the incompetence of public engineering projects. How many scientists and engineers are in congress? Its hard to hire for a job you have never done.

It's pretty fallacious to claim that the lines in NYC were built by private companies. They were built by the government and leased to private companies for administration.

I suspect the same is true for your other examples as well.. how do you "private sector" build something like a subway? The closest you could conceivably get would still be quasi-public, once you get done with all the right-of-way and eminent domain concerns.

You're oversimplifying. The original rail lines in nyc were largely built and run by private companies. Most of these lines were (and many still are) above ground. Later there was a lot of consolidation - smaller lines were bought up by larger lines that connected them together - prior to the era in which the government subsidized and then came to control the whole system. Part of why the subway system still works pretty well today is that these original routes - connecting the heart of the city to the outer boroughs - were designed to go where the demand was so they could pay back the investment quickly. Whereas when rail lines are built with too much government control often they end up ignoring or even deliberately avoiding the most useful and profitable routes in favor of politically motivated ones. (For instance, the monorail in Las Vegas didn't initially go to the airport because the cab companies don't want it to. And buses in San Francisco go through chinatown to please the chinatown merchants rather than the commuters trying to get past that area.)

BTW, you "private-sector" build a subway the same way you do an oil pipeline or a transcontinental railway (eg, Hill's Great Northern Line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_%28U.S.%... )

> The ones you usually compare as world class: NYC, Chicago, London

I wouldn't call the CTA Rail world class. Compared to NYC or London it has limited stops and doesn't touch large chunks of the city.

CTA: http://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/maps/P19_2012_CTA_Rai...

Tube:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/standard-tube-map.gif

Chicago's bus system doesn't really make up for the lack of stops. Lots of people consider a car mandatory here, unlike London or NYC.

The CTA train system does a very good job of connecting the places people actually want to commute through in Chicago. If you don't live here, the map might be misleading; you need to compare it to a population density map of the city. For instance, large parts of the southwest side of the city that appear to have minimal coverage are also heavily industrial. The red and green lines serve very large swathes of the poorest areas in the city, too.

The parts of the city that aren't directly served by train are served by a relatively effective bus system. I wouldn't say the CTA buses are beloved of anyone, but they're night and day compared to SF.

I don't think this is because private companies are inherently more competent. I think the reason for the discrepancy is that private companies aren't going to build in places where there isn't a very good chance of the project turning a profit.

The public ends up funding projects that might be valuable to society, but that won't turn a profit. Of course, this tendency needs to be monitored to make sure that the projects actually are of value, but I would say that public transit in San Francisco-- if nothing else, it brings down real estate prices-- is clearly in that category.

I do not intend to say that public projects are always well-managed, because that's demonstrably false. However, there are a large number of badly-managed private projects as well. In terms of turning a profit, though, the private sector almost always has better material to work with, because it takes the projects that are visibly likely to be profitable.

Yep, that's definitely part of it. Also government funded systems are still built by private companies, but instead of figuring out the best way to save money (as they would do if self-funded) they pad their margins and make the systems incredibly expensive to be built with public dollars.

Also, with publicly funded systems, there are always questions about alignment. Some local rep wants it to go thru her neighborhood, another thru theirs so they end up all sinuous/cicuitous (ala Seattle) whereas private entities don't have this issue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com