I don’t buy the whole “it doesn’t matter because it is the government”-thing. In the two bigger european cities I lived in service quality and government efficiency were usually very interesting voter topics. And local governments who didn’t manage to increase or at least uphold service quality would usually end up losing in the future.

So the thing that doesn’t seem to work in the US is the “hold them accountable”-part. Maybe public transport quality just isn’t an issue the typical US voter considers their business?

Its is not that it is not an issue. People in the US just do not vote. Compare the participation rates in your country vs the US. Majority of the people who vote are also uninformed I would say.

But isn’t it a bit hypocritical to first not vote, then complain about how things are paning out and then conclude that things in the hands of governments never work?

Democracy lives from everybody’s attendance — if you stay at home you got no right to complain.

Sadly even a strong faith in the invisible hand-shaped market-god doesn’t change that, because quasi monopolies like railway infrastructure and the invisible hand-shaped market-god never mix as well as promised for some weird reason.

It's not necessarily hypocritical say all.

If someone abstains from voting because they find all the choices equally unqualified, I don't think that eliminates the person's right to complain nor does it diminish the validity of their complaints.

There are also practical considerations, like voting taking place on a work day.

This is when you traditionally would vote invalid.

Governments are not profit-driven in many other countries with outstanding transit.

Why is America so bad compared to them?

The influence of the car industry in actively undermining alternatives through favorable regulation, direct handouts and access to the administrations by indirect bribes and revolving door delayed favors should not be underestimated.

Some counties in Europe have seen their former very nice state run public transport systems seen completely deteriorated over the past decades once sold out to the so-called 'efficient' private sector. I'm putting in 'so-called' as in practice they still receive close to as much in subsidies as the state-run enterprises they replaced, but now only serve cherry picked parts, most often with lower quality, and divest the required upkeep investments in infrastructure into separate businesses that are completely reliant on public funding.

There is a real myth about the effectiveness of private enterprise vs public enterprise.

Large private companies are not more efficient than a comparably sized public endeavor. Small companies can be, but that is systemically only true if you ignore the waste of 99% of the 'competitors' that are perpetually failing.

> The influence of the car industry [...]

Doesn't Germany have proportionally an even bigger car industry?

> Some counties in Europe have seen their former very nice state run public transport systems seen completely deteriorated over the past decades once sold out to the so-called 'efficient' private sector. [...]

Most public transport used to be private in the 19th century and was nationalized as a combination of cash cow and for military purposes.

The graphs on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of... look pretty good.

My guess is that it has to do with low worker motivation, both from lack of individual incentives and organizational inertia. My friends in government jobs know what their promotions will be for the next 30 years and there is no allowance for variability based on personal performance. This prevents nepotism and corruption, but also means that leadership is based on seniority, not competence.

It would be interesting to see how successful governments manage promotion of talent.

My guess is that it has to do with the poor state of democracy in the United States. Local elections are dominated by moneyed special interest groups, many people don't vote in them, and those that do, often vote down the party line.

Result: It's difficult to run government services well, when we do such a poor job of picking good people to run the government.

I agree with your conclusion, but I'm not so confident "moneyed" special interest groups are the issue. I could speculate it has more to do with voter interest priorities in general.

Take California DMV for example. The DMV is led by state governor appointees. No governor will be voted in or out office based on DMV improvement performance. Running government services well hardly ranks in voters minds

You mean, exactly the same as in any other large enterprise, private or public?

If you think everyone in the private sector is 'profit-driven', and you don't mean 'personal gain driven', which is the larger the company the less likely to be aligned with or incentivized by the benefit to the enterprise, I'm guessing you never spend time in such environments.