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Comment by rsynnott

2 days ago

> For example, there’s zero reason why NJ transit should be a different agency than NYC’s transit authority. They should be the same agency that works toward a comprehensive regional transit system focused on the metropolitan area rather than arbitrary state borders.

This is something that I found pretty bizarre visiting the US. The transport is _so_ regionalised. San Francisco has a separate bus system to South San Francisco (which is as far as I can see just a suburb for practical purposes), for instance.

It doesn't generally make sense to split transport authorities strictly across administrative geographical lines, particularly where the administrative regions are small. For instance, London basically gets away with TFL occupying the same general geographic area as Greater London, but only because Greater London is _vast_. If you tried this with Dublin, it would never work, because the Dublin City administrative area is tiny (Dublin Bus operates in _seven_ local authorities, and its commuter rail lines all cross at least three).