[lightrail123]

Private mass transit has been tried many times before. Read up on the damage it did to places like Santiago, Chile.

I know you haven't thought deeply and this is just an internet forum post, but how do you address:

1) Many riders don't have smartphones

2) How do casual riders know which vehicle to get on?

3) If a profitable route is found, how do you prevent companies from cutting under each other, cost wise? If you think public transit is uncomfortable, can you imagine what it would be like if there was a profit incentive?

4) how do you regulate safety standards and driver training?

5) public transit can afford to be flexible and not collect fares sometimes. You think private for profit companies will let folks skip paying a fare?

Etc etc etc. There are many, many practical reasons why it's much less efficient and desirable to have a number of private companies fighting over a natural monopoly.

[rsj_hn]

> Private mass transit has been tried many times before. Read up on the damage it did to places like Santiago, Chile.

In Sweden, it's been privatized for quite a while (since the 1990s) with substantial cost savings and service improvements. See https://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2010/03/03/in_socialist_s...

In your points you assume privatized = unregulated, but nothing in the modern world is unregulated. You also assume privatized = not publicly funded. In other words, all of your points are strawmen and don't apply to modern privatization efforts.

In fact even in states that have public transportation, what they do is typically create an authority which is a GSE -- government sponsored enterprise -- to run the infrastructure. The vast majority of port, rails, etc are run by GSEs. The difference between a GSE style approach and privatization is that the GSE is awarded a monopoly for all routes that never changes. That creates a lot of disincentives for good performance and cost efficiency.

The rationale of privatization is that you let private businesses bid for contracts for fixed periods of time -- rather than just awarding a permanent contract for all routes to the GSE.

> I know you haven't thought deeply and this is just an internet forum post, but how do you address:

Ouch. I'd suggest that you could think some more about this issue as well.

[coryrc]

NYC has lots of private mass transit providing value to many people without being subsidized to the insane degree public transit is. In fact, they're persecuted despite serving the low-income people the public system supposedly helps.

http://projects.newyorker.com/story/nyc-dollar-vans/