Much of Japan's transit infrastructure is private. There's nothing special about transit that means the government has to own it; being a government, it can regulate things without owning them.

Americans have this idea that transit is for poor people, which translates to "it's not important for transit to make money", which translates to "we need to make it illegal for transit to possibly try to make money", so there aren't even vending machines at the platforms. Whereas in Asia they do profitable land development at the transit stations.

> Much of Japan's transit infrastructure is private. There's nothing special about transit that means the government has to own it; being a government, it can regulate things without owning them.

Japan's private transit infrastructure is only private in high-very high density environments (inner-city) and subsidized in low-density environments (rural, cross-country). Ultimately private group transit requires population density above a certain threshold to be viable.