transit

I am speaking from an American point of of view, but other points of view are welcome as well. After decades of dormancy, it seems that private companies are starting to build passenger rail services again. I honestly have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I kind of feel that capitalism is America's "native language", and that trying to force American institutions to care about public services and not have them sabotaged by private profiteering and bureaucratic red tape at every turn is a losing battle. Instead of trying to fight America's capitalistic impulses, why not harness it for good? Maybe America is simply better equipped for private transit projects than public ones.

However, on the other hand, private transit projects may have less public accountability than their public counterparts, and the ones that have been done or planned have significant issues. Brightline in Florida, for example, has many at-grade crossings and has a higher fatality rate than other train service in the United States. Additionally, their planned project to connect Las Vegas to "Los Angeles" has a rather strange route. Not only are there no near-term plans to actually reach Los Angeles city limits, but it doesn't seem to share any stations with California High Speed Rail. I think only has 1 station that would link to any other passenger rail service in the L.A. area, that being Rancho Cucamonga.

Anyways, it seems we are still in the early stages of private transit construction in the U.S., so I think it is too early to make any serious judgements. Plus we're kind of in a beggars-can't-be-choosers situation. What are your thoughts?