You bring up a good point, but it then comes up to my own question, why can't for-profit public-private enterprise mass transit like Asia pop up in high density places like NYC or Boston on their own here in the US?

That's one thing that makes me think (or believe) why it can't be replicated here.

Tokyo, Singapore, Taipei, Hong Kong and NYC share similarities that they are very dense cities.

Yet, all the dense Asian cities have figured out how to make public-private partnerships work, making local transit (not something like intercity services like Greyhound, Megabus, or Peter Pan) affordable and profitable at the same time to reduce taxpayer dependency and make it a good investment for their cities future as well as those that are willing to buy their mass transit stocks.

NYC, however is stuck with a huge debt where barely 50% is recovered. It's viewed as a tax-sucker that everyone has to be burdened with taxes for their cost of operations.

But if the Asian cities can do it, why can't NY? At a certain point, Tokyo, Singapore, Taipei, and Hong Kong realized that they can only go so far with 100% government ownership and that it ain't working, so they switched to public-private enterprises. What's stopping NYC to do the same when they are also a dense city?

To better say it, why doesn't the City of New York who runs NYMTA to say:

"We are faced with huge budget deficits. We need a new idea so we're going public-private.

We're changing our name from NYMTA to NYMTC (New York Metropolitan Transportation Corporation) and reduce our stake on running NYMTA down to 70%.

At the same time, everyone in the City of NY will get the remaining 30% of shares currently valued at $X per share. Every NY resident is now a shareholder of the new NYMTC.

We are also going public on the NYSE so that anyone that has a better idea to make us more profitable and self-sustaining, and those that believe that public transit is a better way for our future of our city, can buy, sell, or trade our stocks."


If that can be done in municipal cities in Asia, why can't it be replicated to equally dense cities such as NYC or Boston in the US? I mean public transit in these cities aren't just for the poor right? From the poorest homeless to the middle income, to the wealthy private investors and bankers in these cities need public transit to get around right? So why is public-private enterprise of the NYMTA or the MBTA not seeable in the US for a long time?