So many people take the subway, why does the subway lose money?

　　Colleagues take the subway to work every day, and often complain about the crowded subway on the Internet. One day, I accidentally saw a Tucao post he sent, which aroused many people’s responses:
　　”Want to lose weight quickly and empty out the trash? Come and squeeze the subway! Still worrying about arm fat? Come and squeeze the subway! Squat training thigh meat? Come and squeeze the subway! Life lies in exercise, squeezing the subway is good for health! Shanghai subway, the leader of the national health movement!”
　　”Wear high heels when I get off the train, I don’t know who it is! Additional: Me It’s a male.”
　　”Same as above, a male compatriot, so that all career lines are squeezed out.”
　　”When I got on the subway, I was holding a cactus ball. When I got out of the subway, it turned into a cactus.”
　　”Beijing Line 1, one word explains everything. ”
　　The huge flow of people on the subway is evident from this. In this case, passengers who don’t know the truth will definitely feel that the subway company is making a lot of money, but the fact is that almost all subway companies are losing money and need a lot of government subsidies every year.
　　Many people will express doubts, how is it possible? How can such a large flow of people lose money? This is the “survivor bias” at work. “Survivor’s deviation” is also called “survivor’s fallacy”. It has many aliases, such as “survivor’s deviation” or “survivor’s deviation”. What this theory refutes is a common logical fallacy, that is, only seeing the results after a certain screening, and not paying attention to the screening process, so some key information is often ignored.
　　As far as the subway loses money, you think that there are so many people who take the subway, and every time it gets crowded, it happens that the time you take the subway is when the subway traffic is the highest. Generally speaking, most people who take the subway are office workers or students, who happen to be in the morning, middle, and evening rush hours. In fact, the passenger flow of the subway fluctuates greatly. As crowded during peak periods, it is as empty during low peak periods. When you can’t see it, there are very few people on the subway.
　　Moreover, from the perspective of construction and operation, it is also very difficult for the subway to make a profit, because the construction cost is too expensive. At present, my country’s subway construction cost has reached an average of 300 million to 500 million yuan per kilometer, and Beijing has even reached 1 billion yuan per kilometer. In addition, the subway project has a very long route and has a wide range of influence. Once there are obstacles such as buildings, pipelines, and roads along the route, they need to be renovated and protected, so not only the construction project costs money, but also Costs other than engineering are also great.
　　Furthermore, because the route is long and underground operations are greatly affected by natural weather, detailed planning, demonstration, and government approvals are required in the early stage of construction, and even trials are required. It takes a very long time from the beginning to the action and groundbreaking. The length of time can be as short as a few years, and as long as a dozen years.
　　And all of these construction costs cannot be completely financed by the government. In most cases, you have to borrow from the bank. This will also generate interest, plus labor costs, equipment money, operating expenses, etc., which are not small Overhead.
　　Of course, the most important point is that the subway is a national livelihood project, which is a public welfare project. Therefore, the fare of the subway is very low and it cannot maintain operation at all.
　　Passenger ticket revenues are high and commercial operations are good, which may be equal to expenditures, but in most cases operating expenditures are greater than operating revenues, so the subway is losing money.
　　In fact, there are many examples of “survivor deviation”. There was a famous incident during World War II.
　　During the Second World War, the United States and Britain launched a strategic bombing of Germany. However, due to the very strong German air defense forces, US military aircraft were often shot down and suffered heavy losses. In order to reduce the probability of the aircraft being shot down, the commanders of the US Department of Defense decided to improve the fighter jets.
　　After inspecting the damaged aircraft that returned from the battlefield, they found that almost all the aircraft had scars on the abdomen, but the wings had few bullet marks and were intact, so the commanders felt that the protection of the abdomen of the aircraft should be strengthened. But at that time, a statistics professor invited by the military gave an improvement suggestion: strengthen the protection of the wings. This is because even though the aircraft has many scars on its abdomen, it can return safely, and any aircraft that can return home fortunately has its wings intact. This does not mean that the wing is not easy to be hit, but the aircraft that was hit by the wing. All fell. Therefore, it is the wings, not the belly, that should be protected.
　　Facts have proved that the professor’s idea is correct. Once the wing is hit by a bullet, the probability of returning safely is very small, and after the belly is hit, it does not affect the flight.
　　This story gives us an enlightenment: it depends on the overall situation. Invisible bullet marks are the deadliest, and war-damaged aircraft cannot express opinions. Therefore, there are serious errors in analyzing the causes based on bullet mark data. When we analyze a problem, we cannot rely only on the information we can see, and ignore the information that is not obvious or silent. Otherwise, the conclusions we get will deviate greatly from the facts.
　　In other words, the more you look at the “bullet marks” that you can see, the farther you are from the truth.
　　For example, we can often see successful people talking about how easy it is to succeed, and then we want to try it too, but we ignore the fact that the same development is the same, but more people fail. Because of the psychological feeling of “survivor deviation”, we only see the high spirits of the winners, and not the losers falling into the quagmire.
　　Furthermore, many illusions in daily life actually come from the “survivor’s fallacy.” For example, “the foreign moon is rounder than the domestic one”. It is not that the various conditions in foreign countries are much better than those in China, but the various films and materials shown to us are good, and it does not mean that everything is good. ;We think that foreigners are so beautiful because these actors are among the best in their country; foreigners think that Chinese are so rich, because they see only those who have the conditions to travel abroad…
　　In many scams, scammers It will also use the simple principle of “survivor bias” to fool the deceived.
　　A foreign youth, a football enthusiast, received a text message before the start of a football match. The content of the text message stated the result of the match and suggested that he bet. The young man didn’t care, thinking it was ridiculously false. As a result, the result of the ball game is really the same as the text message said. The young man felt that he was just being fooled by a liar.
　　The next day, he received the same text message again and sent him the results of today’s game. He still dismissed it. Finally, the result on the SMS was verified again. The young man still felt it was a coincidence and was not tempted.
　　On the third day, the text message came again. Like the previous two times, it predicted the outcome of today’s game, and the result was correct. The youth couldn’t help but be moved. After the text message was sent on the fourth day, he put out all his savings to bet on football, and he lost completely.
　　Later, his neighbor told him that he had received such text messages, but the result of the next day was the wrong budget. Do you understand what the liar is playing!
　　They edited the two results of the game and sent them to 100 people. After the game, 50 of them received SMS predictions that came true. The next day, the two results were sent to the 50 people, and the results of 25 people were correct. The same is true on the third day. After three rounds like this, the remaining people completely believe it, because in their opinion, every time it is unbelievable, then they will be deceived like the above-mentioned young people. .
　　This is the “survivor’s fallacy”. You only see the crowded subway when you are there, but you don’t see the desertedness at other times.