Punctuality and the Economy

I’m in charge of getting our team from point A to point B, and so I think this is on my mind more than Steve’s.  Still, it’s an issue that should resonate in economics and government classes.  We keep getting to places way too early.  With two MUNI breakdowns last week that cost me 65 minutes of my life trapped in tunnels, and after 10 years in the Bay Area riding (off and on) public transit, I have been trained to expect and plan for tardiness. Now that we are in Japan, I haven’t adjusted my mindset yet, and so we find ourselves waiting at train station after train station, even though I can clearly plan to arrive five minutes before departure.  It’s a cultural thing, not just a funding/structural issue.  (Is it the respect that a timely train implies?  Or the generally ordered and structured world they help create?)  Even leaving SFO for Tokyo, the plane actually took off early (Steve and I strolled down to the gate with 20 minutes to go after lingering at the coffee shop only to find that we were the last ones to board!)  I’d like to see my students brainstorm a list of the positive externalities created by timely public transit, and just as importantly, look at the negative externalities created by poor public transit systems.  It might be worth thinking about as they think about the supposedly staggering cost of building public systems.