Note that almost all Japanese railways started out as public sector projects, and were handed off to private sector to operate. Urban rail operations are within the wheelhouse of private organizations - but I don't think actually building them out is. At very best it could only be done with an extremely tight partnership between public and private sectors. With self driving cars, the private sector is taking more or less a unilateral decision to invest in them, something which cannot be done with pretty much any mass transit project.
Yes I agree with you about Japan. But the reason it was made private is because it was financially failing, as is China’s hsr today.
But I don’t agree with you on your other point. Look at the first link I offered. We have our first commercial high speed rail project going online in the US and they are already breaking ground on the second — LA to Vegas.
We also have a long history of successful private transit systems.
As has been written on hacker news before:
> The public transit system used to be privately owned and operated. Then the cities took over and kicked out the private sector. Now we have terrible public transit.
> Even the subways in NYC were built and operated by private companies (there were two, and they competed).
