Why is public transportation run by the gov't?

Question

the NYC subway system sucks. why can't a private company run it and actually turn a profit instead of giving me crappy service and then saying they are going to have to raise the fare and beg for state funding because they are $4 billion in the red each year? and that is just nyc, almost every city has terrible public transportation. i used to live in pittsburgh and they have PAT, port-authority transit. it is terrible. old busses, long routes, too expensive, and they never make any money so they get bailed out by the state gov't each year. why do we allow the gov't to run our transportation? our water companies are private, along with telephone, electric, gas, etc..yet apparently private companies couldn't run a better subway system?

Lemar, my thinking isn't that they can't turn a profit, but that they have no incentive to do so. in most cities you only have 1 company for each of your utilities too, yet your electric and phone company doesn't charge you $400 a month.

regerugged, the northside expansion of the T is worth any cost of money. just look at what it did to the south hills. now you can go from library to downtown in 45mins. before you had to take a car and that would take...55mins. you can't put a price on that type of efficiency. just look at how smooth the mon-fayette expressway is coming along. the 28 people that use it to commute between brownsville and south park are very pleased.

One saved, i just don't believe that it is not profitable. you know, public transportation was not always run by the gov't. it was a recent takeover (1940s) what makes trasportation so much different than private companies running our water system or telephone system? a company like mcdonalds can run over 20,000 restaurants fairly well and with a profit, yet no company could possibly make a profit with the nyc subway? i find that hard to believe. you think that way because it has been so long since private companies ran public trans. that you can't imagine it working any other way.

Answer 1

The same reason government controls the mail service. To make money, so they can shift and re-allocate funds for other purposes.

If the income for every government program was only allowed to be used to fund those programs and nothing else, and no government program was allowed to exist unless it could be self-funding, everything would be a lot cheaper but a lot of social programs, benefits and services would need to be shut down (as they should be, since most violate the establishment clause of the constitution).

This is a big topic in our house! We're ultra Libertarian and believe every social tax is an establishment of Judeo-Christian tithing, which forces everyone to accept the premise that we are all responsible for each other. We are not. And in some religions, not allowing God to let happen what must happen is actually considered sacriledge.

Answer 2

It is tax money down the drain. The dogooder liberals are always looking to government for solutions. They want government to run things, regardless of the cost and outcome. I live near Pittsburgh. Over that past several months, the scandals coming out of PAT are astounding. Pay, pensions, bonuses, money grabbing by employees at all levels, unbelievably bad pork barrel spending projects. PAT rehabbed an abandon street car tunnel, at a cost of millions, it cost 1/2 a million a year to operate it. About 200 cars a day use it during rush hours. Now, because of the huge operating expense contract, PAT cannot give the tunnel away. PAT is spending 5 or 6 hundred million dollars to put a light rail train tunnel under the Allegheny River. We already have five bridges in the area. It goes on and on.

Answer 3

Public transportation is run by the government because it is fiscally impossible to turn a profit. The cost of everything that goes into making public transportation safe and effective would cause the fares to be so exorbitant as to prohibit the people who need public transportation from using it. The well to do will not generally use public transit (unless doing so for environmental concerns, etc.), and the less well to do could not afford the fares it would take to pay for it. Thus, government is the only institution who can extract enough money from all of us to make it work.

Answer 4

I know where you are coming from, but think about it...they can't turn a profit as it is. If a private company or several companies took it over, you can expect your fare to go through the roof.

There's no competition, so they can charge whatever they want. And where will the so-called profit come from...YOUR pocket.

Answer 5

IN UK - most of our 'public' transport is now run by private companies and, in most cases, is overcrowded, unreliable and over-priced!

Answer 6

That's what we pay taxes for.