And often the places that do have that public-private thing, even if common around the world, is a LOT more deeper than at first seems.

In Europe there is a LOT more regulations and things that they put on those partnerships than they do in america. As a result they run better. In america, we seem to be very adverse to the idea of regulations. And even that ignores the fact that no matter if its common in europe or not, when the government does it by itself without the partnership, it often does BETTEr and costs the people less in taxes.

So my point still stands. The democrats in america don't like to do things as well as they do in europe.

There is a really good video that discuesses this exact problem. Search up "how privatisation fails railways" on youtube. A channel by the name of Shaun discusses the issues with privitization and how it just doesn't work as well even with the partnerships.

Technically that doesn't matter really. You can be a liberal who takes on a lot of conservative viewpoints. The overtone windows is really skewed to the right in america, so MANY liberals are more centrist than in other counties.

Democrats in america is just slightly moderate right wing people in the rest of the world. Bernie Sanders is even a centrist in the rest of the world. But in america he is considered a lefist. So...yeah, your point isn't as valid as you seem to think. Still a point to keep in mind, but...yeah

That's not really odd, at least not for the US. Conservatives HATE the idea of government programs, and love to privatize. So a compromise that the liberals have come up with is public-private partnerships. Government gives some money to a private company to do the service. It causes so many problems compared to if government just did it itself, but this is what we are stuck with until people stop voting conservative.

Of course,I don't know the specifics of Richmond's politics, so I could be wrong. This idea has pervaded almost every aspect of American politics, so it seems very likely to me that's what's going on.