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| Re: Gibbs Can't Name Countries Where Government Health Care Works Better (465296) | |||
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Re: Gibbs Can't Name Countries Where Government Health Care Works Better |
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Posted by GP38/R42 Chris on Mon Jun 22 12:37:04 2009, in response to Re: Gibbs Can't Name Countries Where Government Health Care Works Better, posted by bmtlines on Mon Jun 22 11:29:15 2009. Actually the IRT subway division was profitable - the Manhattan Elevated leases were dragging them down.And again that would probably drag down to too much government intervention too. The owner of the leases on the els was the City of New York, a government agency? And then of course you get into the fact that they couldn't just "abandon" lines that weren't profitable, as true private run system would be able to do. (This is forgetting the fact that of course you NEED these lines for the public good too, which would get into the whole argument that transportation is very hard to be run totally privately). Then there is also the 800-lb gorilla in the room - the IND. The companies would have had a chance IF it had not been built. And much worse, a PUBLIC entity that was built directly with putting the private companies out of business in many cases of many of the routes. The ultimate in Government takeover basically forced. (Not to imply I didn't think it was a good idea, but that's not the topic being discussed). That is not to say that it is bad that subways replaced elevated lines such as at Fulton St in Brooklyn but what if the Fulton St subway were turned over to the BMT while the Sixth and Eighth avenue subways were turned over to the IRT? Excellent point, and also if the fare wasn't at 5 cents forced, and unrealistic, but also the GOVERNMENT run IND purposely wanted to put the IRT and BMT out of business.... As for a unified system - the BMT recognized the need for a unified system in 1927 and probably would have merged with the IRT at some point. In fact steps toward such a merger were taken - in the early 1930's BMT management had acquired contol of the IRT through stock ownership but they were forced to sell the shares. Apparently private monopolies are evil but public ones are glorified :( Absolutely. And this is not to say the combined IRT/BMT (along with IND handed over to them to run) would still be with us in 2009, but at the same time, they wouldn't have been forced out of business as they basically were at the time due to the 5 cents fare, city competition and duplication of routes, leases, rents, etc. |
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