I agree that there are some real risks that come to my mind when I think about the possibility of this being a privately funded thing, and as you pointed out, a private firm has a fiduciary responsibility to obtain profits.
I see a couple of risks there. One that's well-documented in the literature is a lack of transparency. If this is a government-funded project, a public project, there's an accountability process and a transparency process built into that, and I think that's worth keeping.
Another potential risk is a safety risk, or other risks, as a result of a private firm trying to cut costs to maximize the value gain. That's a real potential concern. If a firm is focused on maximizing the value and the return on investment, and all of a sudden something comes up that might be more expensive but is the right thing to do today because it's the climate-friendly option or the safer option, that could get pushed down as an objective.
Another risk is that a private firm might want to see greater returns on investment quicker. We might end up seeing fares, the fee structure for tickets, go up. That places additional risks. It's like a ladder of risk in terms of the project potentially amounting to failure, because a firm may want to see greater returns. That leads to a higher likelihood of tougher competition from other modes, because all of a sudden it's more expensive to take the train than it is to take one of these discount flights or hop in your car. All of a sudden the ridership projections that we have are not fulfilled. That's a real risk to the project.