Japan’s has one of the most effective models and contrary to what most people believe is privately owned and operated. About 70 percent of Japan's railway network is operated by the Japan Railways (JR), while the rest is served by dozens of other private railway companies, especially in and around metropolitan areas.
There is a lot more going on here with self-driving cars being pushed as the only answer that is deeply worthy of examination and discussion, but private companies have been extremely successful in the past before the oil and car companies started acting like cartels and systematically dismantled and destroyed public transportation across the western world.
Keeping “public transit” as a government only activity while convincing the public that government is impotent at its implementation was the core strategy.
Note that almost all Japanese railways started out as public sector projects, and were handed off to private sector to operate. Urban rail operations are within the wheelhouse of private organizations - but I don't think actually building them out is. At very best it could only be done with an extremely tight partnership between public and private sectors. With self driving cars, the private sector is taking more or less a unilateral decision to invest in them, something which cannot be done with pretty much any mass transit project.
Yes I agree with you about Japan. But the reason it was made private is because it was financially failing, as is China’s hsr today.
But I don’t agree with you on your other point. Look at the first link I offered. We have our first commercial high speed rail project going online in the US and they are already breaking ground on the second — LA to Vegas.
We also have a long history of successful private transit systems.
As has been written on hacker news before:
> The public transit system used to be privately owned and operated. Then the cities took over and kicked out the private sector. Now we have terrible public transit.
> Even the subways in NYC were built and operated by private companies (there were two, and they competed).
Public mass transit infrastructure can't really be created by private companies.
So, if you want mass transit, driverless cars really has nothing to do with it. Petition the government to get off their asses and do their job.