public transportation is a service, a public utility, not a business. it should not need to be profitable, and framing it terms of profit at all is wrong imo.
> it should not need to be profitable, and framing it terms of profit at all is wrong imo.
What is the right way to frame it? Total cost per passenger mile might be good. The transit systems that move the most people efficiently would do well on that metric.
public transit benefits the community/region more so than any individual benefit, so I don't think cost per passenger is appropriate either.
Sometimes basic science research funding is framed in terms of "this program generated $10 of economic activity for every dollar spent." Social programs sometimes measured this way too. The term for this escapes me at the moment, but I think it would be more useful?
>” Sometimes basic science research funding is framed in terms of "this program generated $10 of economic activity for every dollar spent."”
This type of cost-benefit analysis (or economic multiplier calculation) is also used to justify public subsidy of sports stadiums and the like. Unfortunately, these analyses always use overly optimistic assumptions, and fall victim to the broken windows fallacy.
It doesn't need to be a cash cow (and probably shouldn't be), but public transit should be able to break even because that is the only reliable signal that a service is providing enough value to justify its cost.
If they're breaking even then what "cost" is there to justify? That's a really roundabout way of saying that public transit doesn't deserve public financing.
