Spotted this on the Wikipedia article for CityRail. I read about this fact a few years ago in the paper, but I think it should be more widely known…
RailCorp requires a government subsidy of close to $1.8 billion a year—approximately 5% of the state budget and more than three times what it collects in fares. “There is an overwhelming sense,” the report concluded, “that CityRail does not promote a real commitment to quality, customer focus and a service culture.”
If those statistics don’t blow your mind then nothing will.
Now I am by no means against subsidy (quite the opposite actually) but given the fact that CityRail’s ticket prices are not radically different from many other international cities, many of which are run by private companies, how on earth is it that private companies can turn a profit on a ticket yet CityRail effectively loses $3 for every dollar of ticket revenue?
The answer is pretty simple:
Mind blowing inefficiency.
