Bus stops here: Shanghai lets riders design their own routes

So, some centrally planned systems are great and some are not. I would point out that the NYC subway system, which was the most extensive in the world after London's until fairly recently (when both were overtaken in length by a dozen systems in China), was largely built by private companies during its major growth phase prior to the 1940s. It has grown at a snail's pace ever since. The IRT, BRT, BMT, IND and ISS created much of the network as it is today [0]. This was at a time when there was both a lot of free market competition as well as increasing (but not insurmountable) regulation on what was permissible. To me, that is the ideal combination to generate growth and efficiency.

>> the two countries knows known for amazing train travel, Switzerland and Japan are very centralized in terms of planning

But these are democratic countries, both of which have a long heritage of private ownership of infrastructure, where people finally chose to allocate funding to unified government-run systems, and which take the oversight of those systems very seriously (and are among the most well-known countries in preventing corruption). In such a system, centralization is not enforced top-down, but rather bottom-up; the people are like shareholders. That is, if it works, acceptable as an alternative to a free market. By comparison, in a single-party state, using a government app to request where a bus system you have no control over might stop is only the most illusory kind of control over your surroundings.

>> There are some things the private market simply can't do when it comes to public transport, or at least not unless you want all city streets and traffic infrastructure to be privately owned as well. How that would look like in practice for a large city is speculation as it doesn't exist.

You make good points which explain how the private system externalizes costs, leading to a completely different kind of graft through regulatory capture by private enterprise. Trading the efficiency of a privately organized system for a bloated public system does still incur the same public costs and tolls on the commons, and still encourages corruption. Yes, private busses are a nuisance and an expense on public roads, and make everything more chaotic. (Full disclosure: I happen to prefer a bit of chaos in human affairs). Just to clarify, though: I'm not arguing in favor of a fully privatized road infrastructure to go along with the private busses. That would be as horrific as a totalitarian state's infrastructure. I'm also not arguing that we shouldn't pay taxes to the city or state to run busses alongside the private ones. What I would argue is that it should be left to the voters how much they'd prefer to allocate to maintain commonly shared infrastructure and services, as well as to elect (replaceable) officials to oversee those things.

Having the government be the only source of local mass transit is just as bad as having private companies own the roads. Neither public nor private sectors are immune to vice. Anything that has a monopoly on the market will act like a monopoly, with all the same inefficiencies and the same pressure on competition that's implied, whether it's the government or the local electric utility, the cable company or the only supermarket in town. The only way to deal with it is for the government to break it up. But the best way to ensure that the government will never break it up is for the government to own it.

FWIW, my perspective comes from growing up in a household of environmental and antitrust lawyers... I'm not especially anti-government, if the government is one I can have a hand in electing and the elected officials don't overuse their privileges. I see the dangers of both governments and markets having unchecked power as roughly equivalent to each other. In this case I'm talking about an unelected government. If you quiz me on what I think about Uber using regulatory capture to monopolize private transport by bribing city officials, I would express roughly the same set of views, and I'm glad when government can regulate the market. I just think its purpose is to regulate, rather than to replace.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interborough_Rapid_Transit_Com...

> It has grown at a snail's pace ever since.

There were price controls that destroyed their business. And that was before cars. And Manhatten is a bit of a special case.

I don't know enough about that history and how 'private' these were. And even if it was true back then, I'm not sure if it would have continue to be as good.

I'm not sure we could recreate that world today. But its a good point, it is possible to get such a system mostly privately.

If you have a good book about the details of that system I would be interested.

> But these are democratic countries, both of which have a long heritage of private ownership of infrastructure

Switzerland centralized railroad ownership 150 years ago. That much longer then it ever was private.

And its really only in the 80s when Bahn 2000 was created where Swiss railroads actually separated themselves from everybody else (this is when Switzerland pulled ahead in modal share). And that was very, very centrally planned. In fact, it was only possible because they system more focused on centralizing an appalling plans that used to be local.

Its hard to see how a private market could produce something like the Swiss rail system. Maybe it could happen, but I can't really see how, without turning into a large area monopoly, like US railraods.

> hat I would argue is that it should be left to the voters how much they'd prefer to allocate to maintain commonly shared infrastructure and services, as well as to elect (replaceable) officials to oversee those things.

In my opinion a public system should run so cheaply that it would be impossible for a private operator to compete. Specially not if they are required to pay the same salary, follow the same safety practices and so on.

Its just hard to see how you could create 'fair' competition that also doesn't disrupt peoples lives.

How such a private and public system would work is a bit hard to really comprehend. Specially in a place like Switzerland.

I am not totally opposed to ideas like this, I just struggle with seen large advantages.

> In such a system, centralization is not enforced top-down, but rather bottom-up; the people are like shareholders.

Most western countries are democracies. And centralized system like China can also have good centralized systems.

I think the biggest issue are how allowed and preferred cars are. Even if you allowed private buses in the US, without changing regulation for cars, and land use, its not gone matter that much.

I am much more open to it in middle income democracies like Latin America.

> Having the government be the only source of local mass transit is just as bad as having private companies own the roads. Neither public nor private sectors are immune to vice. Anything that has a monopoly on the market will act like a monopoly, with all the same inefficiencies and the same pressure on competition that's implied, whether it's the government or the local electric utility, the cable company or the only supermarket in town.

I think this is just not true, many things run perfectly well as monopoly. Like many water and utility systems all around the world.

Monopolies have some inherent efficiencies. Not having a monopoly ensures a very high cost by itself. Competition needs to overcome that cost. And I think its hard to prove that it does. The usual ways to get head in competition against the government is just to pay people less. There are just that many clear cost advantages you can get when running a bus privately.

There is some potential innovation in ticketing, but if you separate the ticking system, the complexity of that is rarely worth it.

For example in passenger railroads, I don't think the privatization and competition efforts have yielded all that much, and had negative effects as well. All that effort and cost could have been focused on better things.

But even there, things like the 'West Bahn' in Austria did actually improve the situation in lots of places (and one of the Bahn 2000 people from Switzerland was involved).

Competition in cargo railroads on public access track has worked pretty well, but its most often the cargo railroads from other monopolies that use it.

So I think this is still an unsettled field and I encourage experimentation. But systems that already run well like Switzerland, I wouldn't want to spend a decade interdicting some new experimental system to try new things in this regard.