Readit NewsNot a viable solution in America. Americans are allergic to public transportation and density. Even in places where public transportation is relatively good by American standards it's seen as a money pit.
IIRC very few public transport systems make a profit on running costs - never mind capital costs. The rest operate as money pits.
Useful systems have huge positive externalities that can't be captured by charging passengers at a rate that reflects those benefits (I'm not sure if this is due to a free-loader effect, irrationality on the passengers part or something else).
I think the only systems that have profited on scale commensurate with their benefits are those that were a real estate play, eg.: the Metropolitan Line[1] in London, Los Angeles trams, Hong Kong subways. I might be wrong about these examples, either due to misremembering or to falling to a just-so story.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro-land
Edit: formatting.
Edit 2: The point, I think, is that if you rely on direct profits for the transport system you give up on huge benefits and accept huge costs across society.
Scandalous to me that although the software is entirely discredited, and although this has been known for years now, only 72 people have been cleared.
I think that - in theory - each case is unique and was individually tested at a trial where the evidence was weighed and judgement delivered. For each case lawyers need to prepare a case for appeal. Then the prosecution [1] has an opportunity to assess the case and to decide whether to contest it. If they don't contest the case then the subsequent court hearing (once it happens) should be quick.
The set of people convicted for stealing from the Post Office could include someone who was caught red-handed with an open till, wearing a stripey shirt and a Zorro mask and carrying a large sack with SWAG written on it in bold letters. Obviously this hypothetical thief shouldn't be acquitted with all the innocent people.
IANAL
Since 2010 there have been large cuts to the police, the courts, the pay of barristers and to legal aid [2]. The result is a massive backlog in cases and covid came on top of that. So it currently takes years to get anything done in the British legal system. There is a lot more broken that just this particular piece of software.
[1] I don't know if the response to these appeals is the duty of the Crown Prosecution Service or the Post Office. The costs will ultimately be borne by the public purse in either case, the PO is financially obliterated by it's liabilities.
[2] The system for paying the legal costs of individuals in court in the UK. Very little of it is left now.
Edit: I don't think anyone is still prison for these convictions. Most sentences were for less than three years and the whole process has been dragging on for a long time.
The Private Eye constantly bought this up, even when I didn't see it talked about in other news publications.
I can't remember the exact specifics, but Fujitsu are absolutely to blame in this. They knew about software bugs that caused these issues since 1999.
Private Eye had a great report on this whole saga: https://www.private-eye.co.uk/special-reports/justice-lost-i... (you can download the report as a PDF on that site).
As I recall, Computer Weekly and Private Eye have been reporting this for over a decade.
This is the second major scandal in recent decades where Computer Weekly, a trade rag, have doggedly held truth to power. The other case I'm thinking of is the Mull of Kintyre crash and the terrible state of the firmware in the helicopters.
eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonar_2087