Throughout recent history, companies have tried to create profitable transportation service businesses and run up against real-world challenges. Whether in air, rail, jitney, streetcar, taxi – or, more recently, ridehail. Some would say that all business is hard, and transportation is like any other… but is it? Even in this digital age, at some point the rubber has to literally hit the road, and that is where the challenges begin.
The streetcar revolution of the early 20th century in the U.S. was driven by private sector entrepreneurs, particularly developers who planned lines around real estate development, including “streetcar suburbs” and newish electric utilities who needed a mechanism and a customer to build out the power grid. These oft individually owned lines struggled to generate profit, were forced to merge locally, and were finally done in by the post World War II push by industry and government to mainstream the private automobile (and the industry behind more profitable bus manufacturing). Two early impacts killed the streetcar: inefficiency from streets clogged with individual vehicles, followed by the related ridership decline reducing farebox recovery and forcing insolvency.
In the 21st century, we have few profitable transit systems, most notably Singapore and Hong Kong, and these particular systems have a few striking differences from most others.
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