You don't need competition to improve transit, there're standards being set all across the world that Boston doesn't come close to, lots of room for improvement by just catching up to the times. The real issue is funding, and the same people who lobby for "competition" are the same ones profiting off the wars that they're actually wasting our tax dollars on. Also, the free market doesn't really provide competition, and when it does it does so merely as a transitory phase as monopoly crystallizes. This is why I don't identify as a libertarian anymore, they're in denial about the truebnature of market forces, even as they bemoan it in real world -think monocropping, big pharma, the military industrial complex, centralized social networks, private central banks. Yes the other option the powers that be sucks just as bad, but that's by design! 'Progressive' dems sandbag public works so that conservatives can swoop in and say, "What we need is market competition!" Anyway sorry for the rant good public transit is something I desperately want in the states and am very passionate about as someone whose only vehicle is a bicycle.