Don't know where this fits best, GO privatization / TOC / real estate discussion moved here:
Brightline is not a good example of the superior efficiency of private enterprise, which is likely financially unsustainable aka about to be bankrupt barring government intervention, despite taking billions in grants and other subsidies from multiple levels of government. Tip of the iceberg:
https://reecemartin.ca/140027266/im-concerned-about-brightline-west/
I would argue Brightline is more of a scheme for Americans to get half-decent rail service under the guise of glorious American "private enterprise". It's a lie to avoid political opposition.
Similar to CDPQ explicitly calling the REM a light rail in earlier public documents, despite all evidence within those documents pointing to metro, or light metro at worst (at lightest?) It's all political. People love light rail in North America, Anglophone and Francophone alike.
You're missing the nuance here. The 4 private JRs were not built ground up as private companies. They came from the splitting up and privatization of
the state-owned railway company, each inheriting pre-existing routes, real estate, rolling stock, and infrastructure.
JR is touted as the gold standard due to its profitability, but a good chunk of the profit comes from real estate and retail near stations, not just ticket revenues. The real estate holdings existing can create the demand for rail services in a positive feedback loop.
Also, the state kept 2/3rds of the state-owned railway's debt during privatization, which was later socialized entirely.
They privatized the profits and socialized most of the debt.
The process of privatization led to divestment of money losing lines, conversions to buses, with many lines closing altogether. Lines that were arguably essential for less populated communities. The eventual private JRs inherited most of the profitable ones.
Furthermore, the 4 private JRs became profitable in part because the weaker JR Hokkaido, Shikoku and Freight were left for the State to deal with. The 3 state-owned JRs operating in smaller markets have predictably been less profitable, if not unprofitable after the 1987 split.
To their credit, going further into real estate and retail was a smart move, a model that was already pioneered by non-JR private railways. The only Canadian equivalent that comes to mind is the Canadian Pacific Hotels, many of which became the Fairmont Hotels we see today.
There are reasons why natural monopolies like railways have been government owned in certain countries. I also personally don't see the JR / MTR models being emulated in Canada easily, if not due to a lower-trust society, due to the red-tape and NIMBYism around real estate development. JR already had real estate when the state-owned JNR split 4 decades ago, then bought and developed more land when it was still cheap. The equivalent in Ontario today would require prohibitively expensive purchases and/or expropriations to put land in the hands of transit authorities. To say nothing of the political cost of expropriation.
The MTR can operate without direct government subsidy due to real estate income, unlike the TTC or GO; but that model relies on the government owning all land, which allows MTR to get cheap land leases & development rights at pre-transit costs, which is impossible to emulate in Ontario. It would be as if Metrolinx could buy land along Eglinton, after Line 5 had already been announced, at prices that did not reflect the future line’s impact on current land value. In some cases, MTR has received cheap rights,
after the line had already been opened. The HK government is the majority shareholder of MTR. It's effectively state-owned.
