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The antidote to monopoly is competition, and transit costs cannot be controlled without it. There is a successful model. Transit agencies can competitively bid and competitively contract bus routes for limited periods of time, requiring firms to supply services they specify. The public agency continues to draw the routes, establish the timetables and set the fares. In a number of cases, competitive contracting has lowered costs and reduced the rate of cost increase.
The Limits of Transit: Costly Dead-End
newgeography.com - 4 weeks ago - 169 views
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i usually find myself in disagreement with cox's positions, but he makes some valuable points in this piece.
Cox is in need of a good editor. Quote: "No responsible government would think of granting a monopoly to a private company without exercising regulatory control to ensure that the company does abuse its position of power."
Chicago can still be very provincial and this is one prominent example, it seems to me.
Would such a scheme work better today than when it last failed miserably in the operation of a hodge podge of transit agencies & fire protection districts as was the cast in Chicago before the turn on the 20th Century.
that's where i tend to come down as well...but still, corporations do benefit from cities with efficient transit. look at new york, singapore, paris. all 'global cities' of the sort daley wants chicago to be competing with, but all with infrastructure that puts us to shame. aon was willing to dish out however many million for the olympics, how much would they pony up for the circle line instead?
Well, I think that Cox here is proposing something slightly different that what things were before the transit system was unified as the CTA. If I'm reading Cox correctly, the system will still be publicly owned, but different parts of the service will be contracted out to private firms. The CTA will still be able to hire and fire the private operators depending on how they do. Well, until Mayor Daley leases the whole thing for 75 years.
Cox is not advocating that we go back to private streetcar companies, but rather that the CTA contract out routes to private companies to operate for a fee. This system is widely used around the world as he notes.
For those who don't know him, Cox is quite the gadfly and loves to belittle American transit investments in most cities outside of a handful.
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