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H-Resin t1_ix6apwv wrote

Reply to comment by maybehomebuyeriguess in I've ridden the bus 3 times and I'm already pissed by _RetroBear

Fuck Stoney but GRTC is a private entity that receives funding from….it’s either the city or the state, I’m not totally sure

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SaidTheTurkey t1_ix6wr9h wrote

GRTC is owned by Richmond and Chesterfield 50/50 and sells services to Henrico and Hanover

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H-Resin t1_ix71yco wrote

Ah you’re right. Ok I see where I misunderstood - GRTC is managed by a private entity. So their staff is run by a private company essentially. Seems like a strange relationship but I don’t know much about mass transit

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anonymousart3 t1_ix8blln wrote

That's not really odd, at least not for the US. Conservatives HATE the idea of government programs, and love to privatize. So a compromise that the liberals have come up with is public-private partnerships. Government gives some money to a private company to do the service. It causes so many problems compared to if government just did it itself, but this is what we are stuck with until people stop voting conservative.

Of course,I don't know the specifics of Richmond's politics, so I could be wrong. This idea has pervaded almost every aspect of American politics, so it seems very likely to me that's what's going on.

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whw53 t1_ix8e7rt wrote

I'm not sure why you think that is odd - this is the prevailing model throughout most of Europe as well. Often times, private involvement is even more embedded in operations there.

For instance, unlike the U.S., private actors have a substantial stake in European airports ( over 40% have private shareholders) while in the US they are all government-owned,

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SaidTheTurkey t1_ix9h92q wrote

Dog there’s been like one Republican mayor in Richmond since the Civil war lol. Y’all just going to keep guessing in this thread or what

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anonymousart3 t1_ix9hse1 wrote

Technically that doesn't matter really. You can be a liberal who takes on a lot of conservative viewpoints. The overtone windows is really skewed to the right in america, so MANY liberals are more centrist than in other counties.

Democrats in america is just slightly moderate right wing people in the rest of the world. Bernie Sanders is even a centrist in the rest of the world. But in america he is considered a lefist. So...yeah, your point isn't as valid as you seem to think. Still a point to keep in mind, but...yeah

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SaidTheTurkey t1_ix9j9hi wrote

I don’t need to preface my comment to remind people of generalities of world politics in a Richmond Virginia subreddit. Especially when someone else just educated you that this is just as common if not standard around the world.

Maybe you just made assumptions about something you don’t know as much about as you thought you did?

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anonymousart3 t1_ix9jz5u wrote

And often the places that do have that public-private thing, even if common around the world, is a LOT more deeper than at first seems.

In Europe there is a LOT more regulations and things that they put on those partnerships than they do in america. As a result they run better. In america, we seem to be very adverse to the idea of regulations. And even that ignores the fact that no matter if its common in europe or not, when the government does it by itself without the partnership, it often does BETTEr and costs the people less in taxes.

So my point still stands. The democrats in america don't like to do things as well as they do in europe.

There is a really good video that discuesses this exact problem. Search up "how privatisation fails railways" on youtube. A channel by the name of Shaun discusses the issues with privitization and how it just doesn't work as well even with the partnerships.

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kneel_yung t1_ix6sd5e wrote

Both.

Also, don't you dare badmouth private industry. They're infallible. Only the government is allowed to suck.

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SaidTheTurkey t1_ix6wljy wrote

GRTC is owned by the local governments of Richmond and Chesterfield so idk what y’all are talking about

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