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Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

Exactly what I was thinking: certification and insurance

Not really, it is all because you have this crazy idea that mass transit systems should be profitable and/or self-sustaining so with the intent of getting profit they cut corners.

Most other countries have subsidized or even free mass transit systems and they realistically don't expect them to be profitable, but helping people/goods to be moved is considered more important.

It is one of those natural monopolies where privatizing stuff doesn't really work.

> Most other countries have subsidized or even free mass transit systems and they realistically don't expect them to be profitable, but helping people/goods to be moved is considered more important.

Here is a good map of "farebox recovery ratio" (the percentage of operating costs funded by fares): https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/gallery/Map_World%20.... Quite a few asian systems recover more than 100% of operating costs, and a couple of European systems do, but no American ones. London's public transit system, for example, gets 25% of its funding from the government. The NYC MTA is at 45%.

Generally I'd agree that it's better to just let the government subsidise it (or just run it) and accept the cost in exchange for the economic benefits.

However, there is one way to make it work privately, and that's to capture some of those economic benefits by buying the land around stations. If someone buys some relatively cheap land near a city and then builds a train line from there to the centre, the value of that land increases and so they can charge higher rents on any housing, offices or shop units built there.

This is illegal nearly everywhere but China, as the rail company becomes the 500 pound, rent seeking gorilla that has dominion over large chunks of a city, or state.

No, it is not. Plenty of examples around the world, and it generally works better. Copenhagen and Hong-Kong come to mind.

Japan as well, If you go outside major train stations in the large city there are big department stores run by the train company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintetsu_Department_Store https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isetan#Subsidiaries

Not sure who "you" is here but nowhere in the USA is public transit expected to be profitable (excluding private coach and shuttle services, airlines, etc. as those are not "public") or even self-sustaining. The general problem is like most government services they are money pits with incompetent, corrupt management.

The US subsidizes mass transit systems. The biggest subsidies go to the highway system.

That and actually not killing a great many people, as that dj light signal would inevitably do sooner or later. Rail signaling isn't just a convenience and throughput optimization like road traffic lights are, with little consequence in the case of failure. Failing rail signals are more deadly than falling air traffic controls.

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