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Comment by adonovan | Hacker News Reader

I was about to reply that this is exactly what happened in L.A. in the 1940s and suggest that you look up the "Great American Streetcar Conspiracy", my favorite example of monopolistic conspiracy. But apparently much has changed since I last did that myself, and now the conspiracy seems to be little more than... fake news.

Unless of course we're in the midst of a "Great American Streetcar Conspiracy"-Conspiracy Conspiracy. ;-)

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That is a bit of a misleading way of putting it. There was indeed a "street car conspiracy" and it even led to criminal convictions. The interpretation that this conspiracy was intended to kill off street cars is harder to justify since street cars were already struggling in the aftermath the great depression andany were bankrupt. I do think that the actions of GM et all did accelerate the decline of the street car but the urban myth about is "Great American Streetcar Company" is generally overblown.

Streetcars and public transport in general should never be run on a for profit basis.

> public transport in general should never be run on a for profit basis

Japan seems to do fine [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Japan

Japan is a special case in many ways.

"can be run on a profit" and "should only be run if it is profitable" are very, very different things.

Infrastructure like trains or roads are a huge net benefit to society already, if they can make a profit too that's neat but it shouldn't be the goal.

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