On Thu, 6 Jun 2002, Nathan Newman wrote:
> Research I have read has explained these differences based on whether
> private companies or the municipal governments owned outlying land.
> Where government owns the land, mass transit pays for itself as new
> areas around mass transit hubs jump in value, thereby paying for mass
> transit expansion. Where private developers own the land, government
> cannot capture the positive externalities of mass transit (as was
> often true in the US), so mass transit had a much harder time in the
> US.
>
> The railroad development of the 19th century understood this phenomena
> well, if in a privatized manner. Railway companies were not just
> given the rights to run trains, but given large swathes of land around
> train development, since the growth in new towns and associated rents
> around the railroad hubs helped pay for the track construction (and
> then some of course).
>