What types of operator will deliver public and passenger transport services in 2045? (8/11)

What types of operator will deliver public and passenger transport services in 2045?

I think public transport services will mostly be contracted out in most places, rather than being operated by the public sector, and so there will be a set of global companies that operate transit in various cities, just as a few companies do today in many European cities.

And this is an institutional change not a technological change, so how quickly this happens, depends on a lot of things. But at some point people will see the advantages of having a public regulator of the services, identifying when services need to be provided, but will realise that they are not the best providers of the service There are economies of scale to be had in the industry somewhere, global firms will be able to deliver that in a way most local agencies cannot.

In the US, I think a large part of this is about the unions and especially the Northern US. Minnesota is going to be the last place to change, other places I think, will be much more aggressive about it. Europe is much more aggressive about contracting out service provision than the US is, which is interesting.