It will often be a company owned by the state.

In Ireland, most buses are run by CIE, a state company. In Dublin, for the last couple of decades, some routes have been run by GoAhead, a private company (Dublin Bus (part of CIE) and GoAhead tender for the routes). It's been a fascinating experiment in privatisation; the buses all use TFI livery, so the only way to tell whether your route is run by Dublin Bus or GoAhead, besides looking it up, is that if it's Dublin Bus, it'll just be late; if it's GoAhead it won't show up at all. For all that people complain about public sector inefficiency, private companies turn out to be very, very bad at competing with the public sector.

It's usually a company owned by the city or the state, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berliner_Verkehrsbetriebe

in EU it's normal

- a company run the busses

- its partially of fully owned by the city/state, i.e. NOT private investors, not private liquidity, no one expects any payouts

- its commonly a special form of "company", e.g. "Anstalt des öffentlichen Rechts" in this case which you can roughly read as "installment/company based on public-law"

Practical that is "mostly" the same as state run when looking at it from a distance. But with some differences. Like it's still a company, has it's own company structure, it's own bookkeeping, it's own employees etc. This leads to a much more clean separation when it comes to budged managing, and where possible removes/reduces direct political influence into daily operations (just direct one, indirectly through ownership etc. there is very much still influence, but this makes it somewhat less suspect to damage from changing political parties non stop changing directions).

Through things can get far more complicated then just one company, in one legal form.

Depends. NYC busses used to be a mix of municipal and privatized companies that were part of the Transit Alliance. In addition to city owned and operated buses you had four private companies: Green Bus Lines, Jamaica Buses, Triborough Transit and Command. Around the mid 00s they were all absorbed into the MTA. Living in south Queens the Green Bus Lines were a big part of my youth as I took the Q41 to school every day and the Q11 on weekends to the mall.

Normally municipalities own companies that do the public transport service in Germany

They're usually private companies owned by the cities.

I love that. It's part of what's hilariously called the "Beamtendreisatz" (roughly, the three rules of public servants)

1. Das haben wir schon immer so gemacht (that's how we've always done it)

2. Das haben wir noch nie so gemacht (we have never done it like that)

3. Da könnte ja jeder kommen (then everyone would try it)

They're so German that they're very difficult to faithfully translate. Just imagine a grumpy older guy looking for every excuse not to do what you want him to.

"Handle nur nach derjenigen Maxime, durch die du zugleich wollen kannst, dass sie ein allgemeines Gesetz werde." -- Immanuel Kant

You not following rules makes me think less of you as a person. Rules are made so not everybody needs to judge every situation correctly themselves. People might overlook consequences or are not informed enough to make good decisions.

You need to understand that Germany is not logical. It is systematic.

> Give the drivers autonomy to judge whether it's safe or not to deviate from the scheduled route.

But they are judging it. And deciding it's not safe. You may not agree but it's their evaluation of their safety. The rules are good for them because they can ensure their safety by obeying the rules.

Don't talk to the bus driver while they are driving is also a rule.

> Me: Noted. Good thing that is not your problem.

As if... when you get injured while leaving the bus, do you really believe the bus driver would just mind their business? There is another rule that demands you help people in emergency situations

It’s not “needing to be taken care of”, in your scenario when you go the hospital for your camel injuries and use insurance for medical care (even if it’s fully private paying your own premiums), suddenly another party is involved who doesn’t give a shit about what you think and are singularly interested in passing along their expenses to anyone else it will stick.

The world is more interconnected and complex then one or two parties engaged in an agreement in complete isolation from everyone else so black and white thinking like that just doesn’t work.

And then you go to the media and file a law suit against the bus company for being reckless. You deny ever asking to get out and say the driver instructed you to get off.

You probably wouldn't do this, but the company needs to protect itself against the people who would.

This can be out of your control. Your health insurance will ask why that camel hit you, and might sue the bus operator for their damages for letting you out where they should not.

Have you got time to get that in writing with an official witness?

When you enter the bus you kind of have a contract that states they will safely let you out at the designated places..

The people that think like this are the ones that want to pick and choose what is not other peoples problems.

It doesn't work or scale in a society. If everyone gets to arbitrarily choose what is 'not your problem', the everything is everyones problem, or nobody's problem.

I once was in a train making an unscheduled stop in the middle of the fields. The driver picked up a colleague who stood waving next to the rails...

Good point, and yes, the cities are comparable in population, around 100 - 200k.

And the insurance conditions are based on DIN/EN, VDE, TÜV and others. If you have bodies that create rules, they will never stop creating rules because it is their job to create rules. Something that started great to reduce unnecessary harm became a red tape monster slowing down everything.

Nobody gets elected or paid to reduce that in a sane manner (not: Chainsaw, Doge)

Leave the windows leaned open so it cools down in the office over night? Impossible due to insurrance. Somebody dies from overheated office and you want to sew the insurrer who enforced this ridiculous rules even on the third floor.. impossible, due to..

30 years ago, when the train broke down, you got a clear statement what happend and what will happening next. Nowadays everyone is treated like a small child. They just tell the obvious leaving the people hanging in uncertainty hence people get mad and question everything without understanding the cause (because they don’t get that information)

The German Engineering is a byproduct. The culture that created is also the one that is holding it from becoming competitive with Chinese automakers.

Like almost everything, utility and efficiency is relative and dependent on the environment and external factors. People often overlook the “fit”.

I'm waiting to see Siemens producing EV cars

Since dieselgate I no longer believe in German engineering. That, and that they just can’t make their trains run on time. Never have I taken an ICE train that was not delayed. How could that happen in an actual engineering culture?