Competition vs Monopoly
Competition vs Monopoly
(31 Jul 2020, 8:08 am)streetdeckfan I suppose you can look at it both ways.
If it's a monopoly, one company is getting all the money, so has plenty to invest in keeping the fleet up to date, plus, it's not as if there is no competition, there's always taking the car. And if you're the sole operator, your only competition is the car so you have to keep standards high. Or it can realise it can keep buses on the road well past their sell by date as passengers have no other options but to keep using them.
I think it's dangerous to look at through the lens of 'monopoly bad, competition good', you've got to look at the context of the situation.
If there aren't enough passengers to fully support two operators, then you're going to end up with two crap services.
Similarly, I think franchising can be both good and bad. Look at London for example, they have a fantastic public transport network, but it's heavily subsidised. If they were to try and actually run it for profit (or even to break even) people would be very surprised how expensive tickets would be!
(31 Jul 2020, 8:08 am)streetdeckfan I suppose you can look at it both ways.
If it's a monopoly, one company is getting all the money, so has plenty to invest in keeping the fleet up to date, plus, it's not as if there is no competition, there's always taking the car. And if you're the sole operator, your only competition is the car so you have to keep standards high. Or it can realise it can keep buses on the road well past their sell by date as passengers have no other options but to keep using them.
I think it's dangerous to look at through the lens of 'monopoly bad, competition good', you've got to look at the context of the situation.
If there aren't enough passengers to fully support two operators, then you're going to end up with two crap services.
Similarly, I think franchising can be both good and bad. Look at London for example, they have a fantastic public transport network, but it's heavily subsidised. If they were to try and actually run it for profit (or even to break even) people would be very surprised how expensive tickets would be!
