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Re: Funding/subsidies worry potential partners in California's bullet train project
Author: fkrock
Date: 10-18-2015 - 08:42
J C Koans Wrote:
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> Bob Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> Dunno...
> if a long ago built/paid for rail system such as
> METRA, serving 10's of thousands of riders a day
> requires govn't subsides, how can a new, expensive
> service, serving maybe a 10th of METRA ridership
> survive on ticket sales alone?
Except for San Francisco Municipal Railway and a very few others, public transportation originally was supplied by profit making private companies. A round trip streetcar fair used about 10% of an average daily wage in 1900. Calculate how much it would cost today using a local daily average wage.
Streetcar fares usually were set by elected officials. They realized what would happen to them at the next election if they raised the fares.
Eventually almost all the public transportation companies were losing money. They were taken over by local governments because public transportation was a necessity. Today the public subsidy is justified as saving the cost of building additional freeways through cities.
-------------------------------------------------------
> Bob Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> Dunno...
> if a long ago built/paid for rail system such as
> METRA, serving 10's of thousands of riders a day
> requires govn't subsides, how can a new, expensive
> service, serving maybe a 10th of METRA ridership
> survive on ticket sales alone?
Except for San Francisco Municipal Railway and a very few others, public transportation originally was supplied by profit making private companies. A round trip streetcar fair used about 10% of an average daily wage in 1900. Calculate how much it would cost today using a local daily average wage.
Streetcar fares usually were set by elected officials. They realized what would happen to them at the next election if they raised the fares.
Eventually almost all the public transportation companies were losing money. They were taken over by local governments because public transportation was a necessity. Today the public subsidy is justified as saving the cost of building additional freeways through cities.
