Maintenance Crises are Emergent

Fascinating element of visiting the transit museum in NYC was learning that maintenance crises were a recurring problem. Politicians suppressed any increase in the transit fare, starving operators of revenue, resulting in deferred maintenance, until some tragic incident generated sufficient public outcry to support raising additional funding by raising fares. The initial five cent fare was just too low to support safe operations and raising it at a rate sufficient to keep up with actual costs (and inflation) has been a constant struggle. 

Source: Wikipedia, via Reddit r/nyc: NYC Subway Fare over last 120 years adjusted for inflation

Emblematic of infrastructure in America, really. We subsidize use by underpricing user costs.