I would like if the MTA made their own trains, but currently they don’t have the infrastructure or funding necessary to set up said infrastructure, necessary to manufacture and test trains. The trains would be better, as safety and quality would be put before profits and cost, since the MTA doesn’t care about profits. The NYPD should not manufacture their own cars, as the NYPD doesn’t give a fuck about safety or quality, and is more focused on just beating and killing poor people. State manufacturing is objectively cheaper than private contractors. Which is logical. The private company needs to sell the service for more than it actually costs in order to make a profit. This means it’s cheaper to make or provide than to buy.

I don’t have a car nor do I want one. I want cars banned from travel within the city. Streets used to be, and should be, an area travelled primarily by pedestrians, bikes, and trams.

I also don’t think a private company should be able to just set up shop and profit from the publicly owned street.

Irrelevant, do you have an actual response?

No… I think “giving tax money to the company that owns citibike” translates to “giving tax money to the company that owns citibike”. And I think the government only really exists if owned by the people. Otherwise, it’s just a violent occupying force.

Unrelated, but if citibike wants to keep people from stealing their bikes, maybe don’t store them… in public? Like, on the street? I mean, the least you could do for some dude who can’t park in front of his job or home anymore is let them steal a bike.

Again, public property is public. If it’s not public, it’s not public property. This isn’t complicated really.

Paying for a service implies giving money to the provider of the service. Giving money to a company is funding them. Jeez.

Yes, any company which receives tax money is publicly funded.

To shorten your comment: the government provided funding to the company that owns citibike

That’s irrelevant and only shows that the government is stealing from society, by directing public funding to private projects, and then pretending said private projects are public.

Citibike is absolutely public property. Why, they even store their bikes on the streets! “Crime” is a silly word made up by governments to let them harm you over arbitrary made up rules.

sure!

I never said only you personally own it. I said every individual who is part of the public personally owns it. Not everything is private property dude.

People going to jail paying thousands of dollars for using public property is greatly troubling. Clearly, the legal system needs to be greatly reformed, if not abolished.

Public property is owned by the public.

How does this not make sense to you?

If you knew what public means, you would know it makes no sense for it not to belong to the public

Yes they do?

Citibike is routinely given public funding lol.

NYC already has enough funds to reallocate to a bike service. I mean, surely the NYPD can spare some of those ten billion dollars.

You’re so close. So so close. Tell me, since public parks belong to everyone, why can’t I build there? It’s almost as if public property isn’t public, and more like private property owned by a company, which calls itself the “government”. The solution is to steal the private property from the government, and declare it public, until there is no government property left for them to operate from.

It belongs to everyone, correct. So why can’t one person, who is part of “everyone”, do as they please with it? They’re not preventing others from doing the same.

If it belongs to everyone, everyone personally owns it, and everyone can do whatever they want with it, because it belongs to them. So anyone can take it wherever they want, like, for example, into their home. Why are people only able to comprehend things in the framework of private ownership?

How can you “steal public property”. It’s public. You already own it. It belongs to everyone. It’s equally as silly as saying you can trespass on a public park.

The MTA cutting service when there’s lower demand makes sense, lol.

People can have all the access they want, to as high a quality as they’d like, right outside their building, by stealing one of those tax funded citibikes. And id fully support them in doing so.

Does the MTA remove stations to make maintenance easier? I’ve never heard of that. And yes, I’m saying that if your taxes paid for citibike, and citibike provides shit service, you may as well make the most of it and take the bike to maintain it yourself. Paying customers suffer? They should stop paying.

Their trains all work, they work well even. And that’s just their trains, they also have a fairly reliable bus service. All this, and it’s not profitable at all. This is the difference between public and private services, the MTA could let everyone ride for free, make zero revenue, and still run reliably. Private companies can’t compare to the reliability of a public service.

How is that being an asshole? You paid the taxes which bought the bike. Surely by this definition, it is public property. Surely you are part of the public.

It won’t. Citibike as an idea is great, but it’s incompatible with profit seeking private sector. The city needs to make an actual public alternative. Driving citibike into bankruptcy will influence the city to do so, and show them private companies cant be trusted to provide public services.