[HN Gopher] Why Japan has such good railways
___________________________________________________________________
Why Japan has such good railways
Author : RickJWagner
Score : 276 points
Date : 2026-04-18 12:29 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (worksinprogress.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (worksinprogress.co)
| newyankee wrote:
| The good thing that happened seems to be that China has
| essentially 10xed the Japan railways template. I wonder how bad a
| car centric China would've had been.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| In urban areas China is just as car centric. A lot of cities
| look like Robert Moses wet dreams[1]. Beijing and Shanghai have
| so many expressways, ring roads and arterial streets they look
| like they were built by Americans. The rail network in the
| country to get from city to city is great but the urban
| planning is taken out of Metropolis
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing%E2%80%93Tongzhou_Expre
| ...
| amazingamazing wrote:
| the railways are excellent, but it's funny. I was _just_ in Kyoto
| and saw flyers seemingly at every single temple opposing the
| Hokuriku Shinkansen extension. apparently this type of opposition
| has always existed (I looked at the history of trains in Japan
| and originally most Japanese did NOT want it at all because they
| thought it looked really ugly), like nimbys in USA, but such
| decisions are apparently federalized according to some Japanese
| nationals I spoke to, so the nimbys have no power.
|
| USA should do the same (well, the current federal government is
| volatile to say, the least, but in general I think it'd be
| improvement).
| dgellow wrote:
| I'm not American, so only have an outsider perspective, but I'm
| not convinced that's possible in the US to do the same, because
| the country has a completely different perspective on
| individual rights. Land ownership seems to be seen as something
| sacred that cannot be infringed in any way, meaning a small
| group of people who own some parts of the land can block any
| development that would benefit the public at large
| amazingamazing wrote:
| land rights aren't exactly a constitutional right, but the
| 5th amendment makes it hard to take it, so in practice would
| probably require a constitutional amendment.
| ghaff wrote:
| The 5th amendment isn't exactly recent. But a lot of
| factors make it harder--for better or worse--to exercise
| eminent domain today than in the past. You could probably
| never reasonably build the equivalent of the interstate
| highway system today. (Though even at the time, there were
| compromises made because of strong community pushback in
| some cases and there was less developed space than today as
| well.)
| kiba wrote:
| The US is the country that originated Georgism.
| yks wrote:
| You'd think so, but in fact it's almost the opposite! You can
| own your land all you want but your neighbor has a final say
| on what's allowed on your land.
| titzer wrote:
| This is mostly true until it's time to build an interstate.
| ghaff wrote:
| Good luck building a bunch of new interstates today.
| Opposition was already coming in at the end of the
| interstate system buildout. Drill down and you'll find
| various odd connections (or lack thereof) throughout the
| system that resulted from community opposition.
| orangecat wrote:
| _a small group of people who own some parts of the land can
| block any development_
|
| Almost all NIMBY opposition to development comes from people
| who do not own the land in question.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Eminent domain is designed for this. People are compelled to
| sell.
| ghaff wrote:
| And you'd better be prepared to fight for it through the
| courts. Might take a decade or more if someone is really
| opposed to selling.
| kdheiwns wrote:
| They still have influence in Japan. The maglev train has been
| delayed for years because a small portion passes through
| Shizuoka, and the local government wouldn't approve
| construction due to it making no stops in the prefecture and
| potentially affecting water supplies there.
|
| This delayed the opening of it from 2027 to 2035 at the
| earliest.
|
| Shizuoka as a whole is unusually screwed by the Shinkansen
| system. Large cities like Hamamatsu, with 800k people, are
| passed over by a lot of the Hikari (mid-speed Shinkansen), and
| the Nozomi (high speed Shinkansen) passes through the
| prefecture with zero stops whatsoever. However, it stops it
| cities like Tokuyama, with a whopping population of 100k.
| amazingamazing wrote:
| is this because of the federal government capitulating or is
| it because the small group inherently has influence
| structurally?
| kdheiwns wrote:
| The federal government has no influence. Prefectures
| approve their own construction. Japan's railways are built
| and operated by corporations, not the government, so the
| federal government has zero say in the matter.
| amazingamazing wrote:
| ah interesting. I wonder why that person mentioned the
| federal government then. couldn't a single person just
| refuse to sell their land and block the entire thing
| then?
| panick21_ wrote:
| Funny how people always endlessly worry about water supply,
| its one of those things that is very easy to claim but very
| hard to prove an in 99.9% of times there really isn't an
| issue.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| People can live without a high speed train. They cannot
| live without a clean water supply
|
| Seems to me that the priorities are correct
| delfinom wrote:
| Hard to imagine how a train that has no emissions itself
| as its catenary powered causes your water supply to be
| unclean.
| thfuran wrote:
| Trains bring people who drink water.
| eudamoniac wrote:
| If the train doesn't make stops in your prefecture, it
| sure doesn't bring people.
| Avicebron wrote:
| pretty sure it's the tunneling not the train itself
| panick21_ wrote:
| Ok but here is the thing, Japan had great civil
| engineering for 100 years, they have made lots and lots
| and lots of tunnels. Japan overall has fantastic water
| quality and is globally known for clean and safe
| bathrooms.
|
| So the argument that 'new train X will destroy the water
| supply' really needs to be based on a whole stack of good
| evidence.
| mmooss wrote:
| The burden of proof should be on not contaminating the
| water supply. That is too dangerous to risk.
|
| > Japan had great civil engineering for 100 years, they
| have made lots and lots and lots of tunnels. Japan
| overall has fantastic water quality ...
|
| Does it? And if so, maybe that's because they make sure
| projects like this one don't contaminate the water
| supply.
|
| > ... globally known for clean and safe bathrooms
|
| What does this have to do with water supply? One suspects
| that you know very little if that's the best evidence you
| have.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Maybe if the only person that thinks that the water
| supply is being destroyed is a local politician with a
| massive axe to grind who is trying to extort a local
| stop, then maybe we should question that over the
| engineers who have built tunnels their whole lives.
|
| This is specially true when these tunnel goes along many
| different areas and seemingly the only that complains and
| believes is unsafe is also the one that is trying to get
| a transit station in the district.
|
| I'm sure they have plenty of evidence on why it is safe,
| like historical examples and such. But how do you 'prove'
| this to a point a politician can't just say, sure its
| 99.9999% safe but we can't risk it.
|
| > What does this have to do with water supply? One
| suspects that you know very little if that's the best
| evidence you have.
|
| The point is that Japan tends to take safety and
| cleanness very seriously. And they have built many train-
| lines and tunnels.
|
| At one point to you personally consider the source of a
| claim?
| kjs3 wrote:
| _At one point to you personally consider the source of a
| claim?_
|
| You like to throw around assertions like "99.9% of times
| there really isn't an issue" with absolutely zero proof,
| but have a big problem with someone saying "I don't
| agree". I don't think you understand what sources, claims
| and truth actually mean.
| kdheiwns wrote:
| Japan has some of the most horrific pollution disasters
| of the 20th century and had tremendously polluted water.
| The clean Japan thing is only true because Japan got very
| serious about safety after companies were ignoring issues
| and polluting water.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Big_Pollution_Diseases
| _of...
|
| And I don't even get the clean bathrooms connection.
| Sounds like a random TikTok meme with zero relevance.
| Half the bathrooms don't even have soap.
| pibaker wrote:
| > And I don't even get the clean bathrooms connection
|
| It's simple. If it is Japan, someone will glaze it.
| exrook wrote:
| It's a bit ridiculous to imply Tokuyama gets better
| shinkansen service than Hamamatsu, because it has Nozomi
| service.
|
| Looking at the schedule towards Tokyo for Monday, April 27th:
| Tokuyama has: 4 16 car Nozomi trains to Tokyo 19 8 car
| Kodoma/Sakura trains to Shin-Osaka 9 8 car Kodoma/Sakura to
| Okayama
|
| Hamamatsu has: 31 16 car Kodoma to Tokyo 19 16 car Hikari to
| Tokyo
|
| Keep in mind the fastest Kodoma seems to only take around 1
| hr 40 mins to Tokyo, and the fastest Hikaru is only 1 hr 20
| mins.
|
| I'm sure it's nice getting a 1 seat ride to Tokyo from
| Tokuyama if you can get on one of the 4 Nozomis, and
| unfortunate you can't get a one seat ride past Shin-Osaka
| from Hanamatsu, but the service levels seem pretty
| proportionate to me.
| kdheiwns wrote:
| Looking only at connections to Tokyo is a bit reductionist
| (difficult to believe, but yes, there are cities outside of
| Tokyo that people go to!). As a mere matter of geography,
| there are unavoidably fewer trains to Tokyo (it's on the
| opposite side of the island). Using that same methodology,
| it would be good to see how many trains from Hamamatsu have
| a direct connection to the biggest metropolis near
| Tokuyama: Fukuoka. That way we can measure which city is
| the best for getting to the opposite side.
|
| The total number of trains with a direct connection from
| Hamamatsu to Fukuoka is, at least based on all the info I
| can find, zero.
|
| Or even a much closer city that people in Hamamatsu would
| frequently go to: Hiroshima. Also zero direct connections
| without a transfer.
|
| People in Tokuyama can go direct to Fukuoka and Tokyo. They
| can do a transfer at Osaka in the case of non-direct
| trains. They're very much better set up than Hamamatsu.
| testing22321 wrote:
| It can't work in the US, because it's not a society that works
| together for the collective good, or to raise everyone's
| quality of life.
|
| It's a bunch of individuals in a dog eat dog situation who
| happen to live nearby.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I was just thinking about this, this morning.
|
| In the US, we have had a pretty wide-open nation, for much of
| our history. Population density was low, and many folks were
| forced to be extremely self-sufficient.
|
| This has resulted in a fiercely independent national
| zeitgeist.
|
| Asian nations, on the other hand, have been very crowded, for
| a very long time.
|
| This has resulted in a much more interdependent mindset.
|
| Each has its advantages and disadvantages. There's really no
| nation on Earth that is as good at "ganging up" on a problem,
| as Japan. Korea and China are catching up quick, though. The
| US is very good at manufacturing footguns. We don't tend to
| play well with others.
|
| It really is hard for exceptional people to make their way,
| in Japanese society, though. They have a saying "The nail
| that sticks up, gets hammered down."
| testing22321 wrote:
| > _In the US, we have had a pretty wide-open nation, for
| much of our history. Population density was low, and many
| folks were forced to be extremely self-sufficient. This has
| resulted in a fiercely independent national zeitgeist._
|
| Australia is much less dense and more remote that the US (I
| drove 1,050 miles in Australia through the desert without
| seeing a vehicle or person, in the US you can't get more
| than 100 miles from McDonald's) but Australian's work
| together and don't have this " fiercely independent "
| nonsense that keeps everyone at each others throats.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I don't know.
|
| Most Aussies I've known are quite independent.
|
| I really like them; maybe because we share so many
| traits.
|
| Also, the US was where the British sent their convicts,
| until we had a big prison riot.
| testing22321 wrote:
| Yes, but Aussies work together for the collective good of
| society. High taxes. Universal Healthcare. Higher
| education, etc etc.
|
| Aussies are friendly and kind, not locked in a dog eat
| dog world.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The USA was founded in rebellion against high taxes and
| heavy-handed central government. That is still an
| essential component of our philosophy.
| testing22321 wrote:
| Agree. Which is why I
|
| , at the top of this comment chain, that it can't work in
| the US because people don't work together.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Australia also has many issues the US had. Car
| dependence. They also don't have high speed rail despite
| their cities being near perfect for it.
|
| Also in Australia the waste majority of the population
| arrived much later and most were always attached to
| coastal cities. These cities were dominated by British
| aristocrat early on and later the British labor movement
| and reflects the culture of London. Australia politically
| was a part of Britain in many ways for 100s of years
| after the US had gone its own way.
|
| The same is true to a lesser degree for the North East
| Coast in the US, arguably it works more like
| Britain/Australia but the South and everything West is
| quite different.
| testing22321 wrote:
| Australia has higher taxes, universal healthcare, higher
| education, etc etc.
|
| Aussies work together, not against each other
| arcticfox wrote:
| I have no strong opinion on the original thesis but your
| fact doesn't make the point you think it does; you're
| right that no one lives in most of Australia, nearly
| everyone is concentrated together on the coast. Australia
| is a bit more urban than the USA overall from a
| population perspective, despite being vastly less dense
| overall due to the areas that no one lives in. So there
| would be fewer people to carry the cultural
| individualism.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/1nbrov9/austr
| ali...
| skrebbel wrote:
| About 9 out of 10 Americans live in cities (incl burbs)
| and the same holds for Australians. Sure, there's fewer
| notable population centers in Australia (Sydney,
| Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane and you got nearly
| everyone), but there's also just 10x fewer people than in
| the US so that kind of matches too. I think the picture
| you link to distorts this, it does not account for the
| fact that there's simply way fewer Australians.
|
| I'm not convinced that if there were 300m Australians,
| that they'd still all live in those 5 cities (with every
| city being 10x bigger). I think there'd be more of them.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > I'm not convinced that if there were 300m Australians,
| that they'd still all live in those 5 cities (with every
| city being 10x bigger). I think there'd be more of them.
|
| I don't think so either, but because of the climate and
| geography, I also don't think there'd be 10x more cities,
| similar populations, I think you might end up with 2-3x
| more, really, at most.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Fair. It'd turn into a Japan and a half (big one on the
| right, small one the left)
| ghaff wrote:
| That's a rather expansive view of cities based on what
| the US Census categorizes as urban vs. rural. Between
| myself and a couple neighbors, we're on close to 100
| acres, but that's urban according to the census because
| we're not _that_ far from a major city and fairly close
| to some smaller ones.
| enaaem wrote:
| Grain culture vs rice culture.
|
| Rice cultivation requires collective water management, so
| you get more collectivist cultures. Growing grain mostly
| depends on rain, so your harvest depends on your own work.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I think this is not a smart read of the situation. The US has
| built a tremendous amount of rail and other transit (eg NYC
| subway) back when it was an even more individualistic society
| than today.
|
| In fact they country was clearly able to come together for
| the public good many times throughout their history.
|
| You could consider other causes.
| Fricken wrote:
| Francis Fukuyama is now arguing that the US in now a
| substantiantively lower trust society than it was in 1995
| when he published his second book "Trust: The Social
| Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity."
|
| >In it I argued that trust is among the most precious of
| social qualities, because it is the basis for human
| cooperation. In the economy, trust is like a lubricant that
| facilitates the workings of firms, transactions, and
| markets. In politics it is the basis for what is called
| "social capital"--the ability of citizens to cohere in
| groups and organizations to seek common ends and
| participate actively in democratic politics.
|
| >Societies differ greatly in overall levels of trust. In
| the 1990s, Harvard's Robert Putnam wrote a classic study of
| Italy which contrasted the country's high-trust north with
| its distrustful south. Northern Italy was full of civic
| associations, sports clubs, newspapers, and other
| organizations that gave texture to public life. The south,
| by contrast, was characterized by what an earlier social
| scientist, Edward Banfield, labeled "amoral familism": a
| society in which you trust primarily members of your
| immediate family and have a wary attitude towards outsiders
| who are, for the most part, out to get you.
|
| https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-world-simply-does-
| not...
| xyzelement wrote:
| I didn't realize the link but I agree with the decline in
| trust.
|
| One obvious axis is that in 1995 (I came to the US right
| around then) the country had a high church attendance
| rate, racial homogeneity, % of people who are parents,
| and % of people who were born here.
|
| In the 30 years that passed all of these numbers had
| become _significantly_ lower and obviously each factor on
| its own contributed to a decline in societal trust.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Most all of that old rail was done by private companies
| seeking to make a profit. Just like Japan. Look at nyc
| subway building rates after it was publicly owned. Almost
| zero expansion. Contractions even.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I agree w that and disagree what the person's I replied
| to dumb premise.
| retired wrote:
| Same in The Netherlands. There are companies that buy plots
| of lands near existing rail just to massively screw over the
| government if they ever want to expend rail. Double digit
| million euro deals over small patches of land.
| dwroberts wrote:
| Objections to large projects exist everywhere all over the
| world.
|
| The reason the US has such an issue with this is because of
| state autonomy (and corruption). Most other places in the world
| don't allow subregions of the country to do whatever they want
| and make up laws etc
| briandw wrote:
| Switzerland is even more regional than the US. Yet they seem
| to have built an excellent rail system.
| titzer wrote:
| The US interstate system is incredible extensive, uniform,
| and well-maintained (relatively speaking). States love
| federal dollars, and if there were federal dollars for train
| lines, they'd fall over themselves to get them. That doesn't
| seem to happen for a lot of reasons. It seems like there are
| a lot of corruption problems that seem to eat up train
| projects, but for some reason the interstate system, though
| replete with plenty of boondoggles, is an unstoppable road-
| spreading machine.
| chermi wrote:
| My impression is it's more to do with being able to sue for
| everything under the sun and block things almost indefinitely
| under different forms of review, usually environmental.
| greenavocado wrote:
| We need to stop pretending it isn't corruption and conflict
| of interest
| ehnto wrote:
| I am a big infrastructure nerd but I believe they are right, it
| does change the way idyllic landscapes and towns can look.
|
| But I'm not sure it's a valid reason to block such practical
| projects. It's the same for cities with building height
| restrictions (or really very many types of restrictions). It
| will make an old city look a bit less romantic for sure, but
| also people have to live and work here. Cities aren't for
| looking at.
| airza wrote:
| Japan isn't a federal government, so the decision can happen at
| the national level because prefectural and local governments
| zoning ability came from the national government.
|
| I don't think the federal government could de facto change
| this, though in practice they have levers available.
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| There's a 'build the Japanese train system' board game "1889"
| -- https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/23540/shikoku-1889 --
| https://www.amazon.com/Shikoku-1889-Railways-Players-Minute/...
| zdw wrote:
| Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47677481
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Countries like Japan seem to make policy that serves the people.
|
| Other countries decisions serve politicians, corporates, the
| rich, and maybe possibly finally, the citizens.
|
| Here in Melbourne a city of 5 million people we don't have a
| train from the airport to the city despite decades of political
| talk about it. But why not? Because the Airport Coporation makes
| vast unfathomable profit on car parking. What's most important?
| Just look around.
| thegreatpeter wrote:
| most of the japanese railway system is private. their 2 largest
| companies are some of the largest publicly traded companies in
| the world.
| presentation wrote:
| Works in progress also had a great article recently (also
| discussed on hacker news) about how Japanese railways are
| private, profit earning real estate development corporations.
| [1]
|
| Unfortunately, people from western countries have very
| negative views toward the privatization of mass transit
| despite the wild success that Japan has experienced. The
| model makes so much sense: if trains are just a way to get
| people to the real estate that you developed, then you're
| going to make sure that the trains AND the destinations are
| really nice, which also turns out to be very lucrative (at
| least in densely populated areas) as a cherry on top.
|
| And even worse, like this commenter above alludes to, it is
| trendy in the West to believe that real estate developers are
| evil, and that corporations that make money are sucking the
| life out of society. This kind of degrowth populism pretty
| much guarantees that the successful Japanese model is out of
| reach for most countries, because it is exactly the pursuit
| of profit that makes Japan's system so nice - not some edicts
| from a benevolent and extremely capable government.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47762060
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > Unfortunately, people from western countries have very
| negative views toward the privatization of mass transit
| despite the wild success that Japan has experienced
|
| Japanese culture would frown heavily on enshittifying the
| transit experience to earn more profit. Western culture
| mass transit is already often shitty, and I cannot imagine
| how shit it would become if a for profit corporation took
| it over and started to squeeze it to make more money
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| like many other places, there is a airport bus in Melbourne as
| I recall. there is (or was) a train from Melbourne to Canberra
| too (with a short bus transfer on the Canberra side). it was
| _very_ difficult to figure out how to buy a ticket for it!
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I love the Japanese rail system. I am retired, now, so don't
| travel there, anymore, but I always used to cry, after coming
| back to the US, and getting on LIRR trains.
|
| The most amazing thing, is how on-time they are, and how
| _precise_ their stops are. They have marks on the platform,
| showing exactly where the doors will open (Protip: Don 't stand
| directly in front of the doors, when they open). I hear that this
| is the result of _human_ drivers; not robots. Apparently,
| engineer training in Japan is pretty intense.
| trvz wrote:
| The Densha de Go game series lets you experience a bit of what
| it's like to drive a Japanese train.
|
| There's also Hmmsim 2 on iOS, which may be easier to get/run.
| retired wrote:
| As a European I can only dream of having such a rail system.
|
| When I have to buy six individual tickets for triple digit
| prices to get somewhere and the train ends up slower than going
| by car I wonder why I would even try.
| journal wrote:
| Because they have bad something else.
| signorovitch wrote:
| Japan also has amazing car infrastructure too! Last time I was
| there visiting family in the mountains, I was quite impressed by
| the number and quality of tunnels and spiral ramps. The highways
| are similarly privatized, with tolls like train fares reducing
| the need for government subsidies.
| cebert wrote:
| Japan has some of the best infrastructure anywhere. It will be
| interesting to see if they can keep it that way with their
| population changing and becoming more geriatric.
| epolanski wrote:
| I've been in Kyushu, in the south.
|
| Japanese railways are indeed amazing, but it should be pointed
| out that peripheral routes are being dismissed everywhere in the
| country side, often isolating people and killing places.
|
| Infrastructure is also dated in many places.
|
| It's not a criticism to Japan, I think they are just facing the
| fact that many people move to the cities and the country is on a
| population decline as well.
|
| They are facing this very masterfully.
| rwmj wrote:
| In the West some private equity company would be buying these up,
| selling off the land and separate businesses, and screwing the
| rail passengers for all they can, until the whole thing sinks in
| a sea of debt. Then repeating the formula.
| rayiner wrote:
| The japanese railroads are owned by private companies.
| rwmj wrote:
| Yes. How would private equity buy them unless they were
| private companies already?
| hollerith wrote:
| The point is that Japan has a well-established private-
| equity industry [1] so the fact that PE firms haven't
| ruined Japanese railways suggests that PE firms aren't
| universal corrosive solvents like you seem to want us to
| believe they are.
|
| [1] https://flippa.com/blog/pe-funds/japan-private-equity-
| firms/
| rwmj wrote:
| Or it could be there are Japanese laws or customs
| preventing them from doing it. The article mentions
| maximum fare prices for example. Japanese antitrust law
| is strong and thoroughly enforced.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Most likely more long term thinking in culture. Where as
| in West every single person just think of ways to profit
| in absolute shortest possible ways. Even if that were to
| kill untold trillions of human beings. After all what
| does a few hundred million dead matter if you can make
| extra cent from your company.
| hollerith wrote:
| Your first sentence might in fact be true, but you've
| presented no evidence or argument that it is, so all
| you've done so far is make a cheap dig at America's
| private-equity industry with nothing to back it up.
|
| I fail to see how the topic of this comment thread
| (namely "why Japan has such good railways") sheds any
| light on the US PE industry or vice versa. Maybe you can
| explain the link. (If you can't then your cheap dig is
| also off-topic.)
|
| (And I fail to see how _antitrust_ law in particular
| might constrain a PE firm in any way.)
| retired wrote:
| By privatizing them. Look at European rail in the past 50
| years.
| eudamoniac wrote:
| I thought the rails were owned by the government, leased to
| the companies?
| rayiner wrote:
| Some of them are, like the Shinkansen lines. Others are
| both owned and operated by private companies:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C5%8Dkaid%C5%8D_Main_Line.
|
| Additionally, the stations are generally owned by private
| companies--including the the development rights at the
| station. This means that the Japanese private rail
| companies capture a portion of the value created by the
| rail service, which otherwise would be an externality. So
| the companies have an incentive, as landowners, for rail
| ridership to stay high.
| drunner wrote:
| Japan railways are mostly (all?) privately owned.
| rwmj wrote:
| But by companies that care about running railways, not by
| vultures that want to rip the companies apart and load them
| up with debt for their own short-term profits.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| So western MBAs are the problem. I've long held this view.
| Avicebron wrote:
| Yes.
|
| From the article:
|
| "Today, the most striking institutional feature of Japanese
| rail is that it is privately owned by a throng of competing
| companies." ...
|
| "Core rail operations are profitable for every Japanese
| private railway company, but they usually only account for a
| plurality or a small majority of revenue. The rest is
| contributed by their portfolio of side businesses."
|
| It's like a textbook good application of capitalism that
| unsurprisingly the US can't seem to get right.
| pibaker wrote:
| JR was only privatized in 1987 after the previous state owned
| railway company borrowed too much to fund its infrastructure
| projects like high speed rails.
| jmull wrote:
| I'd think Japan being a long, skinny, population dense country
| has to help. There's just more potential in every km of rail
| laid.
| ladberg wrote:
| Is that not similar to both the west and east coasts of the US?
| SeanLuke wrote:
| It's true to some degree now. But it wasn't very true -- or
| expected to be true -- back when train lines were being
| established. That was during westward expansion.
| delecti wrote:
| WRT the west coast, mostly. It's about as long as Japan, but
| only about half the population. It's certainly populated
| enough that it's not justifiable that rail travel is so slow.
|
| Less so for the east coast though. From roughly DC to Boston
| is decently connected with rail, but is not nearly as direct
| of a corridor as Japan.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| The east coast ("Amtrak") rail blows. Expensive, and slow.
| ghaff wrote:
| Really? Take it all the time going to NYC even though
| it's not really very convenient for me to get to a
| northern station. Amtrak is priced to make it a good idea
| to book tickets in advance. Shinkansen isn't cheap
| either, especially if you don't have a pass--not sure of
| current details.
| 9x39 wrote:
| Cars were already popular in the US and good enough of a
| solution in conjunction with the highway system, maybe. If
| basic transportation is solved, it probably reduces the
| impetus to build passenger rail for rail's sake.
| weberer wrote:
| The Northeast Corridor in the USA has great rail service. Its
| the best way to travel between DC and NYC.
| ladberg wrote:
| I'm very aware! I live in NYC and have taken many trains
| up/down the corridor. But it still pales in comparison to
| the experience I get in Japan (which is cheaper, nicer,
| faster, more frequent, often more direct, connects up
| better to local transit within cities, etc.)
| floatrock wrote:
| This article is dishonest about the level of privatization in the
| JR's.
|
| Yes, they're private companies, and they do diversification like
| investing in real estate around their rail cooridors to grow
| towns and grab people looking to do some shopping in their
| adjacent department store as passengers are walking through the
| stations. This is transit-oriented development at its best.
| (Also, ask google why land property lines in the US western
| states often look like big checkerboards)
|
| But there's no mention of the Japan Railway Construction,
| Transport and Technology Agency (JRTT). That's the government
| entity that builds many new Shinkansen lines. It then leases them
| to the JR companies at a fixed rate for 30 years. This keeps
| massive construction costs off the private companies' balance
| sheets.
|
| Or when they do need large capital spends, there's no mention of
| the Fiscal Investment and Loan Program (FILP) which provides
| loans in the form of low-interest credit backed by government
| guarantees. Their creditors are effectively lending to the
| Japaneese government, not the JR company.
|
| Is that kind of system really privatized? It's hybridized at
| best, and it shows that you really need government support of
| some sort to push country-scale infrastructure like this forward.
| Sorry free-market absolutists.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| It is not at all dishonest to talk about their privatization.
|
| It's dishonest to hand wave it away while pretending that
| because there are government controls for construction and
| financing that it would go even better if it was more
| government or "more hybridized". With no source, just opinion.
|
| No one that has ever had to switch blue to red to green in
| toyko just cash, buying a new ticket at each stop only to go a
| couple miles, has ever forgotten how privatized Japans railways
| are.
|
| I expected to see comments about how good it is, how most
| people love it, how it's highly privatized, and of course about
| how to make it better with more government.
| floatrock wrote:
| You misunderstand me... I'm not saying the privatization is a
| bad thing, handwaving it away, or saying lets throw
| government at it. I'm merely pointing out that in a 4,000
| word essay trying to explain all the factors that let Japan
| have such a good railway system, there's a huge amount of
| emphasis on the privatization part, and zero mention of all
| the public sector subsidies that enable the entire system.
|
| It's fine to talk about the efficiency of the private
| operators. No problem there. The dishonesty is in omitting
| any discussion of how the tracks that the whole system
| depends are built with heavy government support. Without
| that, one could be forgiven for reading that article and
| thinking "oh, just privatize it and you'll be as successful
| as Japan."
|
| I think the take-away here should be more along the lines of
| what a working public-private partnership can look like and
| what roles each can play. I'd love to see a 4,000-word
| article that compares this model to the regional transit
| authority models we have in the US.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| Did you miss this paragraph? They _do_ talk about the
| subsidies from the national and prefectural governments.
|
| > Carefully designed public subsidies also play a useful
| role. Although Japanese railways do not receive subsidies
| for day-to-day operations, they do receive government loans
| and grants for capital investments. These are typically
| tied to public priorities, such as disability access or
| earthquake-proofing, or to projects that have large
| spillovers that the railway company would be unable to
| internalize, like removing level crossings, or elevating
| at-grade railways or trams in order to reduce road
| congestion and accident risk. Generally, the local
| prefectural government will match the contribution of the
| national government. Larger new build projects are subject
| to lease back or debt-payment conditions that fare revenue
| is expected to pay back.
|
| Unless this was added after the fact, I think this is
| mostly an issue of careful reading. To me, the article
| absolutely says that it's a hybridized system like you
| mention.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| It's generally regarded that Hong Kong has the best subway in the
| world. There are many reasons for this, but one cannot be
| overstated: Hong Kong's geography. A huge portion of the city
| consists of long thin urban corridors sandwiched between
| mountains and the sea. As a result, Hong Kong need concentrate
| its funding on only a few subway lines to support a huge portion
| of the population.
|
| This good article aside, I wonder if the same thing is true about
| Japan when we're talking about long-distance trains. Compared to
| France or Germany, Japan is basically a stick. A very large chunk
| of the populace lies on a single train line running from
| Kagoshima up to Hakodate, running through Fukuoka, Hiroshima,
| Osaka, Kyoto, Yokohama, Tokyo, Sendai, etc. So you can slap a
| single bullet train line there and service all of them.
| kinow wrote:
| That is a good point but I think it doesn't apply
| everywhere.that has a similar shape. New Zealand has a similar
| shape but without railways interconnecting cities. You cannot
| cross the country, the islands, or even regions by train.
|
| I think this could be a variable to contribute to a good
| coverage and infrastructure... but there are probably more
| factors involved.
| andrewl wrote:
| The population density is probably one factor. New Zealand
| has 5.34 million people in 103,000 square miles. At the other
| extreme you have Hong Kong with 7.5 million people in 430
| square miles. Each mile of track gives service to a much
| larger percentage of the population in Hong Kong than New
| Zealand. The same goes for a lot of the United States. The
| coastal corridors in the United States are population dense,
| but the interior less so.
| phire wrote:
| Population density is one thing. Another issue is timing.
|
| New Zealand was a really young country when railway
| technology came along, and didn't really have enough time
| or money to invest in a good railway network before other
| technology came along.
|
| Airplanes are the perfect technology for NZ's geography,
| because they just fly over everything. There are actually a
| few places in NZ that received passenger airline service in
| the 30s before they received a railway connection (namely
| Gisborne), and many other places that never received
| railway connections.
|
| At the same time, NZ was one of the fastest adopters of the
| automobiles, second only to America.
|
| I think viable cars and airplanes had taken another 25
| years to arrive, NZ might have had a much more complete
| railway network, with a much better chance of surviving
| intact into the modern era.
| kinow wrote:
| Didn't know about these historical facts, looks like
| timing really contributed to the current situation in New
| Zealand. When I was in Auckland some years ago, I
| remember NZ trying to bring some railway services back,
| before the pandemic.
|
| I never got to travel on these, but I'm hoping to do that
| when I'm there again, probably next year. I see the
| website is still the same, so if anyone is going to NZ:
| https://www.greatjourneysnz.com/.
|
| And to be fair, looks like you can more or less cross the
| country, as long as you don't plan to get all the way to
| Invercargill.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Population density is not accidental. HK has towers and
| greenery vs Anglophone culture which is to build homes
| sprawled into the greenery.
| leonidasrup wrote:
| The US urban sprawl in 50s, 60s was not cultural and not
| by accident but planed part of civil defense.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47815910
| kinow wrote:
| That is definitely a factor, especially comparing Japan &
| HK with NZ.
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| didn't NZ have a decent inter-city train service in the past
| but no longer does bc cars won out in the end?
| stephen_g wrote:
| Geography like that does help a lot, it's part of the reason
| it's so easy to do really good high-speed rail in Italy over
| somewhere like Germany that is way more spread out. But it's
| only half the picture, you also need the political will to get
| it built!
| leonidasrup wrote:
| The population density of Italy 201/km2 is lower then
| population density of Germany 241/km2, so from point of view
| of density, Germany should have more high-speed rail than
| Italy.
|
| But because cars are major German export driver and car
| manufacuring is major employment in Germany, anything
| competing with cars has not much political support.
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/germany-merz-pledges-to-
| resist-2035-eu...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschlandticket
| andrewl wrote:
| _The population density of Italy 201 /km2 is lower then
| population density of Germany 241/km2, so from point of
| view of density, Germany should have more high-speed rail
| than Italy._
|
| That would be if kilometers of rail tracks scaled linearly
| with population density per unit area. My guess (based on
| no research at all) is it's more that there's a population
| density tipping point, and after reaching it rail
| development dramatically increases. I do also think you're
| right about the influence of the German car industry.
| Neikius wrote:
| Density is not that important. It's the distribution. Japan
| for example has most of the population concentrated close
| to coast.
|
| Italy has a few major population centers south of dome but
| sparsely populated otherwise.
|
| And so on...
| andrewl wrote:
| Yes. You get a lot of bang for your buck as far as the number
| of people served. Hong Kong is less than half the area of Rhode
| Island, but the populations are 7.5 million for Hong Kong and
| 1.1 million for Rhode Island. Small area plus high population
| density is the situation where trains are most valuable.
| user_7832 wrote:
| I think you're broadly correct and that's definitely a reason,
| and I have another example to support it.
|
| Mumbai too has a very similar structure (the core city is
| basically a peninsula that goes north-south). Our railway lines
| run N-S as well, with (till the recent Metros) feeder roads
| connecting them.
|
| Mumbai is also one of the most densely populated cities in the
| world (#2 by some metrics).
|
| Our local railways have an annual ridership of 2.26 _billion_
| [1]. Pretty much everyone agrees they 're vital to the city.
|
| 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumbai_Suburban_Railway
| ang_cire wrote:
| I'm sure geography helps, but it's certainly not the driver for
| good train service design. Cities in Japan are definitely not
| laid out in thin lines, and there's not just a few routes in
| any given city. I was living in Nagoya back in high school, and
| its train lines are _sprawling_.
|
| Side note, there actually isn't one shinkansen from Kagoshima
| to Hakodate, that route would take you on 5 different
| shinkansen lines: Kyushu, Sanyo, Tokaido, Tohoku, and Hokkaido.
| But I get your point.
| renewiltord wrote:
| California is also like this for the most part. Bay Area has 8
| m, Los Angeles area has 17 m, and San Diego area has 3 m. 28
| out of 39 live in those three. Straight line.
| ghaff wrote:
| With relatively little between the Bay Area and LA to serve
| as a viable customer base. Hence, a lot of the problems
| getting California HSR going. Imagine you had the Boston area
| and the Washington DC area and took out NYC and Philadelphia
| in the middle. You'd have the same issue. The Acela isn't the
| fastest rail service (in part because NYC _is_ in the middle
| but Boston to NYC and NYC to DC are a lot more practical than
| the whole route. I did it once when I wasn 't in a hurry but
| it was because I could afford the time.
| z2 wrote:
| The Hong Kong Metro is also very well planned, architected, and
| generally well run operationally. So much that the MTR
| corporation actually offers international consulting services.
| And for two decades, they have consulted with many mainland
| Chinese metro systems, hence it's no coincidence that the
| Shanghai and Shenzhen metros both look and feel very similar to
| HK's.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| That's arguably irrelevant to anything except the Shinkansen.
|
| Switzerland has 8m people. Bay Area has 8m people. Switzerland
| is 1/4th as densely populated as the Bay Area (4x the size) yet
| they have 10x better transportation
| zhdc1 wrote:
| The Swiss public transport system is a century-plus old at
| this point. Compare pictures of the Zurich tram system in the
| early 20th century with today - squint your eyes and you
| won't notice any difference.
|
| That said, I'm willing to bet that San Fransisco and the
| surrounding communities had comparable public transportation
| in the 19th and early 20th century. While I can't speak for
| the bay area, you can still find exposed tram tracks in many
| US cities - Philadelphia, for instance.
|
| The US's move from having the best to arguably the worst
| public transportation system in the world among developed
| countries is a lesson in disastrous government policy.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| Even if the geography isn't thin it seems like there are major
| US cities you could draw a route through that would have
| similar population distributions. Or at least good enough for
| the economics to work.
| tjpnz wrote:
| In Japan there's a cross party political consensus that public
| transport projects are a net positive for society. That's
| important when you have work which could take a decade or more to
| complete - the Chuo maglev project for instance will be complete
| when my kids are approaching adulthood and they're still not in
| primary school. I often wonder what we might be able to do in New
| Zealand (where I'm from) if we had the money and population to
| support it. But then I remember that one of the two major
| political parties always cancels or scales back anything ongoing
| which is public transport related, every single time they're
| elected, so nothing ever gets done.
| mvvl wrote:
| one thing worth pointing out is that the legacy private railways
| work because they were never nationalized and had decades to
| quietly buy up land around stations before it was worth anything.
| That's really hard to replicate from scratch. This model is great
| in dense cities but even Japan is still struggling with rural
| lines
| linguae wrote:
| Exactly. Tokyu's model of building a train line from the city
| center to rural areas and then building suburban developments
| in the rural areas the line traverses doesn't work in already
| built-up areas. Hence, there are still publicly-owned lines in
| areas where that model doesn't work. A great example is the
| Yokohama Municipal Subway. It is publicly owned and serves
| areas that were generally already built before the subway line
| was built.
| strado wrote:
| Exactly this. And the European case is the opposite starting
| point. Paris already had 2+ million people when the Metro
| opened in 1900. You're not building rail to create land value,
| you're building it because the existing density already demands
| it. Which is why European systems basically all require public
| subsidy while the Japanese private lines could turn a profit.
| The preconditions are just so different that copying either
| model somewhere else rarely works. IME the people pushing "just
| do what Tokyo does" tend to skip over this part.
| ttul wrote:
| "Japan's liberal land use regulation makes it straightforward to
| build new neighborhoods next to railway lines, giving commuters
| easy access to city centers. It also enables the densification of
| these centers, which means that commuters have more places they
| want to go."
|
| This is the most important paragraph in the article. It can't be
| overstated how ingenious Japan's system of zoning is and how much
| this has benefitted their society in ways we can only dream about
| here in the West.
| savanaly wrote:
| >how ingenious Japan's system of zoning is
|
| I'm only barely familiar with it so I ask this in good faith:
| is it really ingenious or is it just more permissive? My
| bias/priors are that the simpler and truer statement is: it
| can't be overstated how beneficial more permissive zoning laws
| are to a society.
| dangus wrote:
| Sometimes permissive zoning laws don't actually encourage
| positive urban development outcomes.
|
| Example: Texas
|
| Zoning has to both exist and be well-designed.
| zbrozek wrote:
| I bet you'd see natural market driven concentration around
| rail stations in Texas too, if they had a useful rail
| network.
| XenophileJKO wrote:
| You might be surprised, look at Dallas. They have a
| pretty extensive rail network.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Dallas does not have permissive zoning, even in
| comparison to a city like Seattle.
| graeme wrote:
| Texas zoning isn't nearly as permissive as Japan's.
| Setbacks are a big added requirement. Minimum parking
| requirements too though that is changing.
|
| But it would not be legal to build japanese neighbourhoods
| in Texas.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Texas zoning is only "permissive" relative to other states.
| Relative to Japan it's quite restrictive.
| zbrozek wrote:
| That's a big part of it. They also do zoning mostly at the
| federal level, meaning local opposition isn't relevant.
| nottorp wrote:
| From what I remember, Japanese zoning allows small shops
| (there's a size limit) in any residential zone.
|
| That means no car trips when you run out of bread or milk.
|
| Smartest property of that zoning system IMO.
| infecto wrote:
| I also wonder how much the pressure filled culture of not
| standing out has something to do with this. My impression
| is Japanese are under a lot more pressure to not abuse the
| permissiveness of the zoning laws.
| dgellow wrote:
| Fwiw that's what we have in Germany, unless you live in
| remote places. You always have a Lidl, Aldi, or REWE you
| can walk or bike to.
|
| No idea what our local zoning laws are
| chmod775 wrote:
| Not really the same thing. They're much larger already
| than most stores you'd see in urban Japan.
|
| Think more in terms of small convenience stores ("Spatis"
| with daily necessities) everywhere. Typical distance to a
| store is maybe 500-1000m in Germany. In dense areas of
| Japanese cities it's closer to one store every 100m-200m.
|
| So in Germany it'd be a 10 minute walk, while in Japan
| most of your "walk" would be getting downstairs.
|
| The flipside of that is that selection is going to be
| limited compared to what you'd find in Germany.
| dgellow wrote:
| I see. What you describe does seem to match what I
| experienced in NYC, Portugal, and Spain? Small
| supermarkets everywhere with a bit of a random selection
| of items
| gpvos wrote:
| Even the smallest Lidl, Aldi, or REWE are not small shops
| in the sense meant here.
| ttul wrote:
| You haven't lived until you have experienced the Japanese
| Kombini (convenience store).
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| There are other aspects beyond simply being more permissive.
| I recall reading for example that property transfer tax is
| remarkably less on bare land, enough so that when travelling
| in Japan you will regularly notice bare lots for sale, as it
| is beneficial for the seller to tear down a lot before they
| sell it. This sort of thing encourages churn of housing, and
| coupled with liberal zoning, enables an accelerated increase
| in denser building. Tbh it probably encourages lower
| construction costs since more people are doing construction.
|
| IMO in this whole conversation, whether discussing any
| jurisdiction not just japan, impacts of zoning is an over
| emphasized and tax policy under emphasized (ie. almost never
| discussed).
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| I have a hard time believing that a tax code that
| incentives destruction in any capacity is a good thing.
|
| If the land is more valuable without a structure the
| current owner has natural incentive to do that, or someone
| else has incentive to buy, demolish and re-list.
| yulker wrote:
| One thing that is critical is that the country hasn't turned
| home ownership into an ever growing financial asset that is
| meant to carry the majority of one's wealth into perpetuity
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Well, it did at one point, it's just that the crash that
| resulted was so nasty it disabused anybody of that notion.
|
| At the peak of the bubble era, just the land underneath the
| Imperial Palace had an estimated real estate value larger
| than the entire state of California.
| antirez wrote:
| "West" when we talk about urban spaces, walk-accessible cities
| and public transportation is, IMHO, the wrong category. Europe
| and USA are very far apart.
| chii wrote:
| they might mean west of japan ;)
| margalabargala wrote:
| Go far enough and Japan is west of Japan, several times
| over. You can always keep heading west.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Great point.
|
| Granted I'm approaching it from the perspective of a tourist
| or business traveler, but 6/6 of the European cities I've
| been in were fully navigable for my purposes via transit. I'd
| probably guess half or less in the US.
|
| Even in NYC or SFO, the metro areas are so large it really
| makes the success rates low depending on the trip.
| ianm218 wrote:
| Europe and USA are both huge places so it depends what you
| mean. If you compare major east coast cities - Boston, DC,
| and NYC to European metros like Paris/ Madrid/ Lisbon the
| biggest tax on the citizens is the same in that it's
| impossible to build anything so a huge % of income needs to
| go to housing.
| yorwba wrote:
| Well, Japan isn't much different in terms of the share of
| income that goes to housing:
| https://housingpolicytoolkit.oecd.org/2.H_conso.html
| zhdc1 wrote:
| East coast cities were built before modern building codes.
|
| Something that, for some reason, people in the states don't
| want to accept is that - when given the choice - the vast
| majority of people prefer living in dense urban
| environments.
| cmatza wrote:
| OP addresses that. Japan is _not_ particularly dense,
| especially outside of core downtowns.
|
| You see the same dynamics in London and Paris.
|
| People do not "prefer to live in dense urban
| environments" by urbanist standards.
|
| They prefer to live in dense urban environments by _North
| American_ standards, which can still be far less dense
| than urbanists really want.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| > which can still be far less dense than urbanists really
| want.
|
| And this was my comparison?
| cmatza wrote:
| May be an assumption on my part, but the language "people
| prefer to live in dense urban environment" is typical of
| urbanism-boosters - who definitely push a lot online that
| leads one to believe that anything less than inner Tokyo
| is unacceptable.
| darknavi wrote:
| A great video on the zoning laws in Japan if anyone wants to
| nerd out on them
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlwQ2Y4By0U
| oliwarner wrote:
| Ingenious? It's a system that endorses hyper-capitalism through
| sub-9m2 kyosho jutaku.
|
| That isn't ingenious, it's battery farming.
| kemiller wrote:
| This is a great article, but I think it's hard to ignore that
| Japan's culture of harmony is a big part of why they were able to
| choose sensible regulations that benefitted everyone. We struggle
| to pass even the most sensible land use reforms because
| entrenched interests want to remain entrenched even if it hurts
| the system overall.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| So America's culture of individual liberty is why people don't
| have the freedom to build whatever they want on the land that
| they own?
| Someone1234 wrote:
| American's culture of me, me, me, now, now, now is why.
|
| If it doesn't benefit the individual almost immediately
| they're strongly opposed.
|
| They want the benefits of strong infrastructure but let
| someone else build it without inconveniencing ME or costing
| ME a dime.
|
| It is a culture that teaches greed is good and society should
| be built around all gain no cost.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| > They want the benefits of strong infrastructure but let
| someone else build it without inconveniencing ME or costing
| ME a dime.
|
| Which is what the Japanese have. private railways
| antonymoose wrote:
| As an American, I always hear all these weird stories about
| New York and its subway system. All the random busker type
| nonsense, the petty crime and the "mugger wallet" type
| jokes. Not to mention the major crimes that make the news.
|
| I'd rather not deal with it? Yes I know roads are
| dangerous. I'd still rather not deal with the expected
| culturally imposed insanity that the Japanese curiously
| seem to lack.
| mmooss wrote:
| > I always hear all these weird stories
|
| The weird stories, about anything, are nonsense;
| sensationalized to either be emotoinally compelling or
| even active disinformation to serve some political end
| (especially about American cities, especially about NYC.)
|
| It's just induced fear. Just go to NY and ride the
| subway. Millions do all the time without any problems,
| without a second thought. It's really no problem and
| amazingly convenient. (Busking is people playing music.)
|
| Of course some crime occurs among millions of people but
| so do lottery grand prizes and heart attacks. I've been
| on many subway rides without experiencing one crime or
| even seeing one, and much other public transit.
|
| And when you do, you'll know what to think of the stories
| and people who tell them.
| superdisk wrote:
| It's extremely common for there to be human shit in the
| train cars, and lunatics going nuts. It's absolutely
| nothing like Japan.
| mmooss wrote:
| > It's extremely common for there to be human shit in the
| train cars, and lunatics going nuts
|
| Where does that come from? Not from your experience.
| You've never been on NY subways, clearly.
|
| I've never seen feces - and anyway, how could you tell if
| it's from a dog? Did you examine it? Take it home and
| test it? It's one of the stories that maybe is slightly
| plausible, and which yields such strong disgust that
| rationality is overwhelmed and it makes a sensation -
| perfectly constructed misinformation or urban myth. Like
| waking up in a bathtub with a kidney missing.
|
| 'Lunatics' is such a loaded (and hateful) word you'll
| have to specify what you mean, but the occasional person
| talking to themself is harmless and completely
| uninterested in you (thus the conversation with themself)
| - I have never had any problem with such people on public
| transit or elsewhere. They are the most vulnerable people
| and compassion is the appropriate response.
|
| As I wrote above, the stories are nonsense and it's
| induced fear.
| superdisk wrote:
| I actually am speaking from experience, I saw both of
| those things my first week in New York. It's really not
| uncommon, I find it hard to believe that you've never run
| into shit/barf, usually when a car pulls up that has
| nobody in it, that's what's in there.
|
| And this is all to say nothing about the decrepit state
| of the stations and cars themselves.
|
| I've also been to Japan and experienced their trains.
| It's in such a different league that it's almost comedy.
| OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote:
| > All the random busker type nonsense, the petty crime
| and the "mugger wallet" type jokes.
|
| Most of this is stories. Yeah there are buskers but tbh I
| like buskers. Music in the public square is a plus not a
| minus even if it's not my personal preference of music.
|
| Subway crime rates are around 2-4 incidents per million
| rides. There was a spike during covid and it started to
| rapidly trend down afterwards. That corresponds with
| economic desperation during that period pretty cleanly.
|
| But that 2-4 incidents per million rides is roughly
| comparable to the crime rates at gas stations, etc. The
| difference is that density is lower so you just see it
| less often. It happens just about as frequently but you
| are less likely to witness it because you are less likely
| to be present when it happens to somebody else at a gas
| station.
|
| > I'd still rather not deal with the expected culturally
| imposed insanity that the Japanese curiously seem to
| lack.
|
| Trust me Japan has just as much of an issue with crime on
| rail. Arguably they have higher rates but the Japanese
| police often just don't consider sexual harassment or
| sexual assault a serious crime and would rather brush it
| under the rug or otherwise deal with it outside the
| criminal system to avoid harming the abuser. (ex: an
| incident that I'm familiar with: "oh we gave the guy who
| assaulted you on the train your address so they could
| mail you a hand written apology note instead of charging
| them with assault")
|
| And the "wacky in your face" crime (intoxicated, mental
| illness, etc) is still very much an issue in Japan but
| it's cracked down on by police in places that tourists
| frequently visit during the day and otherwise everyone
| just expects it so people who live there don't really
| mention it to tourists.
|
| I mean hell look at Shibuya Meltdown for some of the more
| mild "funny" examples.
|
| The only real difference between the NYC metro and the
| Japanese metro is that it's louder because there's not a
| social norm to limit talking on the train (until people
| are drunk ofc). Otherwise it's all the same shit and you
| see it all when you start commuting.
| hirpslop wrote:
| Yes, that's exactly right. Maximal 'individual liberty' is my
| right to maximize my land's value. My neighbors either agree
| to maximize theirs in a way that increases, or doesn't
| hinder, mine, or they are my enemy to be litigated to death
| by my lawyers for damages.
| swed420 wrote:
| > because entrenched interests want to remain entrenched even
| if it hurts the system overall.
|
| You might say it's because we live in a "low trust society,"
| but not for the reasons the people who usually invoke that term
| claim.
| dudul wrote:
| What are the reasons people usually invoke? And what are the
| "true reasons"?
| swed420 wrote:
| Most people using the term "low trust society" are implying
| that certain subsets of the population are the cause of it,
| often with racial (non-white) and/or economic (lower class)
| components, whereas somebody like me views those groups and
| their behaviors, to the extent that it's true, as a symptom
| of the low trust society rather than the root cause. For
| me, the root cause is systemic corruption all the way to
| the top, for decade after decade.
| mmooss wrote:
| > Japan's culture of harmony is a big part of why they were
| able to choose sensible regulations that benefitted everyone.
|
| Is there evidence of that? It sounds like a broad stereotype of
| a complex, large country by an ignorant outsider.
|
| > entrenched interests want to remain entrenched even if it
| hurts the system overall
|
| Another way to look at that is prioritzing the individual over
| the system, a hallmark of liberty and human rights.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's also hard to ignore that Japan was bombed to smithereens
| in the 1940s and undertook a nationwide rebuilding effort that
| might have contributed to a more uniform approach to land use.
| shevy-java wrote:
| Japanese are the original micro-optimisers. Kaizen.
|
| South Koreans then took over. In between were the Taiwanese.
|
| The next wave will be mainland China.
| fsh wrote:
| Japanese public transport is good, but no match for the Swiss
| system. Outside of big cities, the coverage is spotty, and even
| reasonably large towns are only connected by reserved-only trains
| every couple of hours that get booked out days in advance. The
| almost complete lack of digitization is also remarkable
| (reservations have to be made with machines in the stations).
| There are other annoyances such as the public transport in Tokyo
| shutting down completely at midnight. In contrast, the Swiss
| government-owned system delivers usable connectivity to almost
| any human settlement, even most mountain villages. The ticket
| prices are also not so different, which is surprising considering
| the large difference of salaries in the two countries.
| kohsuke wrote:
| You can make reservations online: https://www.eki-
| net.com/en/jreast-train-reservation/Top/Inde...
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| How could a route busy enough to completely fill a train every
| few hours not justify some kind of regularly scheduled service?
| weberer wrote:
| Most cities at least have night busses. Tokyo has 0 options
| after midnight.
| justanotherjoe wrote:
| It's worth mentioning that swiss is a nation of 9 million,
| whereas Japan has 128 million people. I'm not sure how
| comparable it is. You probably don't need to pass through a lot
| of settlements for any public projects in swiss, for example.
| YmiYugy wrote:
| I think it's more politics and economics. Switzerland is
| quite a lot richer than Japan and is extremely decentralized
| politically. That creates strong incentives to provide good
| public services even to mountain villages. It also helps that
| Switzerland isn't experiencing population decline. The Swiss
| population as a whole is growing quite rapidly and from what
| limited data I could find even rural regions are growing. I
| think land acquisition doesn't really play a huge role. They
| are both mountainous countries where rail projects have to
| squeeze in valleys or bear the expense of tunnelling.
| talkingtab wrote:
| The introduction lost me. To quote: "Japan's vast railway
| network", but it does not address the mouse in the room. Japan is
| approximately the size of California with a population density
| that is three times that of California. I would argue that a
| comparison of rail systems without addressing those critical
| issues may be interesting but isn't really informative. The
| issues are complex.
| DmitryO wrote:
| Russian or Chinese one way better.
| grishka wrote:
| When was the last time you had to travel between Moscow and St
| Petersburg? Sapsan trains are _always_ sold out from my
| experience. And those night trains don 't always fit your
| needs, although they are plentiful and dirt cheap. They are
| supposedly building a dedicated high-speed rail line, but I
| don't have much faith in that, especially in the current
| situation.
| cbdevidal wrote:
| I honestly had no idea they're so libertarian-capitalist. I
| figured it was government-led, government-run.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > "I think that though we are a railway company, we consider
| ourselves a city-shaping company. In Europe for instance, railway
| companies simply connect cities through their terminals. That is
| a pretty normal way of operating in this industry, whereas what
| we do is completely different: we create cities and then, as a
| utility facility, we add the stations and the railways to connect
| them one with another."
|
| I think this is it. The economic model incentivizes rail
| development. (Certainly, part of it is also cultural and legal
| frameworks that in the US make it very hard for this model to
| work)
|
| Because the railway companies also participate in the economic
| activity at the destinations, they extract extended value from
| enabling mobility. Imagine if the rail operators owned a
| percentage of a stadium or convention center, for example. This
| then creates the economic incentive to build more connections to
| this "hub".
| kccqzy wrote:
| > Certainly, part of it is also cultural and legal frameworks
| that in the US make it very hard for this model to work
|
| How so? In the United States Congress granted land to railroad
| companies, and the companies can sell the land to finance
| building tracks. Many cities started as railroad stops and grew
| because of the railroad.
| d_sem wrote:
| I suspect the commenter above is reflecting on 2026 USA and
| not 1850 USA. The past tense nature of your comment if part
| of the concern highlights a common recognition that there is
| limited evidence the country is currently capable of
| building.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| A lot of NIMBY/racism/classism and modern reality of legal
| delays means that it can be costly.
|
| Zoning laws is another. It's a lot of fun visiting Japan and
| Taiwan because you can wander around and there's a huge
| variation of utilization in a given block. US approach to
| zoning means that I rarely see similar utilization in the US.
|
| Separate from this is politics.
|
| I'm in the NYC metro area and we've been trying to expand
| access into NYC for decades.
|
| You would think that this would be a no-brainer because it
| enables so much economic activity in both directions (NY/NJ).
| Yet, Chris Christie canceled the ARC project (which itself
| was years in the making) for optics at the time of the Tea
| Party.
| kavok wrote:
| NIMBY seems to have a hard time stopping data centers. Why
| do they have more success stopping renewables and rail?
| Avicebron wrote:
| If we put the same amount of economic pressure on rail
| that data centers have...the US would have probably have
| almost as nice infrastructure as China and be
| significantly better off.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| NIMBY _is_ stopping data centers.
|
| Maine set to become first state with data center ban:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/09/maine-data-center-
| ban.html
|
| Also, it's a different kind of more insidious and
| visceral NIMBY rooted in racism and classism.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Yes, see the famous essay, Nimby Good When My
| Neighborhood by I Hyppocrit.
| ghaff wrote:
| Not sure it's a bad thing. So, they would employ maybe 30
| people after they're built. Consume a lot of power and
| water. I'd have to see the details of a specific proposal
| but I'd probably vote against personally.
| kavok wrote:
| Sure, it's stopping some, but not most/all even with
| strong public opposition.
|
| See: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/small-
| missouri-to...
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The public rail industry has no bribing mechanism unlike
| the data center industry and the fossil fuel industry.
| Did I write bribe? Sorry, "campaign contribution." But
| sometimes also literally bribes like Tony Soprano cash in
| the bag.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| There's an existing disused commuter rail line in NJ near
| the Hudson that was shut down in the 60s. It still has many
| of its stations and density to support rail service today
| but can't be reopened because of the NIMBYs. If they can't
| make that work, the rest of the country is mostly hopeless.
| zdw wrote:
| Kyoto station is a great example of this. It's enormous inside,
| with a hotel on the top, event facilities, and a ton of retail
| all over.
|
| https://www.kyotostation.com/kyoto-station-building-faciliti...
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| In my travels through Japan and Taiwan, rail stops are almost
| always hubs of economic activity of all sorts. It's a selling
| point when searching for accommodations while planning trips.
| Easy access to food and shopping. Taiwan night markets in
| cities, for example, are almost always near major rail
| station of some kind (light, metro, train). No need to go
| very far to get from one point of interest to another.
| rjh29 wrote:
| It's actually a bad example - there is barely anything around
| Kyoto station except a few hotels and some shopping malls.
| The main shopping/entertainment area and almost all tourist
| attractions are north of it, requiring connection by bus or
| subway.
|
| The areas around major stations in basically any other city
| are far more developed. Look at Osaka-Umeda for example. I
| don't know if that's due to the historical buildings or the
| relative lack of good railway within the city itself (Kyoto
| is mostly a hub to get between other lines)
| openuntil3am wrote:
| > there is barely anything around Kyoto station
|
| This is simply not true. Kyoto station is probably the most
| densely packed shopping / entertainment area in the city.
|
| Source: I live in Kyoto.
| Freedom2 wrote:
| I sometimes see the US referred to as a "post-rail" society,
| meaning that it has outgrown the need for rail for the more
| intimate, personal transportation methods we see today. I
| submit that, like other HN commenters say, the US doesn't need
| rail due to this society. How will US citizens help their
| friends move or do their large (in terms of volume) Costco
| grocery shopping without large trucks and only using rail?
| zhdc1 wrote:
| The same way people in every other country do it (rental
| vans)
|
| Rail <-> Road isn't an either or issue. It wasn't in 1850 and
| it isn't today. The only difference, at least in the US, is
| that poorly designed government intervention/policies forced
| low population densities.
|
| Rail and other forms of public transport simply don't work
| with suburban sprawl. Large roadways also don't work -
| compare the state of US infrastructure against pretty much
| every other country out there - it's just that the financial
| bill from an unbelievable amount of deferred maintenance
| hasn't come due yet.
| rayiner wrote:
| I'm probably a top 5% train nerd for the U.S. I took trains
| to work primarily from 2012-2020, in NYC, Philly, Baltimore,
| and DC. I used to ride Amtrak from Baltimore to DC every
| morning. I love Tokyo's train system. I go there every year
| and I always take the train. But when I went there with my
| wife and three kids, I took a lot of Ubers! You can't fit our
| double stroller with big America bags of toys and snacks on a
| business hours subway in Tokyo.
|
| Americans love choice and they love _stuff_. They fill their
| cars with their stuff drive around on their own schedule
| without having to watch a clock or think about what's near a
| train line and what isn't. (Even with Tokyo's amazing railway
| network, you have to think about that!) My wife drives to
| three different grocery stores 20 miles apart to get exactly
| the products she wants. The idea of just accepting whatever
| brand of hamburger buns they have at the store that's
| conveniently on the train line between our house and work is
| completely alien.
|
| To live within a Japanese system, Americans would have to
| change a bunch of other things about their culture. We'd have
| to give our kids independence to take the train themselves,
| instead of spending every saturday driving them around to 3
| different far flung activities. We'd have to learn to
| appreciate what's conveniently available, instead of the
| exact thing we want.
|
| And not even Tokyo's amazing train network makes it
| convenient to juggle two working spouses and school drop off
| and pickup for three kids. What line is convenient to your
| house, both parents work, and all three kids' schools? The
| Japanese don't even try to solve that problem.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > We'd have to give our kids independence to take the train
| themselves, instead of spending every saturday driving them
| around to 3 different far flung activities.
|
| The shock! The horror! > The idea of just
| accepting whatever brand of hamburger buns they have at the
| store...
|
| How could a family possibly survive! Imagine having to eat
| a different _brand of hamburger buns_! Truly, America is a
| shining beacon of modernity and convenience where I can get
| the exact, precise, industrially mass produced hamburger
| bun.
| rayiner wrote:
| You're preaching to the choir. I loved working at a
| company with a company cafeteria because I hated going
| out into midtown manhattan every day to choose lunch. But
| convincing americans that all their "choice" is illusory
| isn't a matter of transit policy, it's something much
| harder.
| ipdashc wrote:
| Maybe you misinterpreted the post you replied to? I don't
| think they were saying this stuff is a crazy proposal,
| just that it will be a different way of life for most
| Americans. No need to be so abrasive.
| keybored wrote:
| They were reacting to what was presented and saying that
| it was foolish. It doesn't matter if the author presented
| it as "I am saying this" or "Americans think this".
| magnio wrote:
| Damn, we get it, USA is a dystopia. No need to keep scaring
| us with those stories.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I lived for many years next to a train station in NJ. I
| could readily take the train in to Manhattan, but for the
| hours I'd be there in evenings and on weekends, it was much
| more convenient and faster to drive in. My town was far
| enough out that the cost was slightly cheaper to drive
| (before the congestion fee). I then had the freedom to
| leave at any time without concern for the schedule.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > My town was far enough out that the cost was slightly
| cheaper to drive (before the congestion fee)
|
| Aside from culture, this is another aspect which they
| touch on in the article. Japan doesn't have public
| parking. You're only allowed to buy a car if you have
| access to a parking spot. Tokyo is full of lots but
| they're all paid lots that charge in 30-60 min
| increments. There's also a lot of congestion zones in
| Tokyo which make driving in the city very expensive.
| Companies that do deliveries in the city often have a
| company car (or fleet of such) which lets them drive to
| destinations.
|
| Overnight workers who do spend significant times at work
| before/after the trains stop do drive in. Most Japanese
| families in Tokyo live in suburbs surrounding the city
| and will walk, bike, or drive to a nearest train station
| to commute in.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm fairly far out from Boston/Cambridge but I'm pretty
| much the same situation. Going in for a commute (or 9-5
| event), the commuter rail is pretty good; I'm a 7 minute
| drive to the station. But it's basically unworkable for
| an evening event (or a day into evening event). Trains
| are maybe every 90 minutes outside of commuting hours and
| they're largely empty. I end up suffering the drive in,
| paying for parking as needed (which isn't an issue if I'm
| going in for my usual theater), and then a pretty easy
| drive home. Wouldn't even think about taking rail in for
| the weekend.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > How will US citizens help their friends move or do their
| large (in terms of volume) Costco grocery shopping without
| large trucks and only using rail?
|
| Japan happens to be the 4th largest market (by stores) for
| Costco (US, Canada, Mexico, Japan)
|
| Apparently, it works just fine.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| People in Japan also move and go shopping.
| twodave wrote:
| Rail for the US has always been more about moving goods than
| people. For overland long-haul freight it is significantly
| cheaper than trucking. Rail allows us to ship goods to places
| where we don't have ports or river access. A place like Japan
| can make such good use of rail simply because it is so
| densely populated.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The US is also densely populated; when people are talking
| about high speed rail they are talking about connecting the
| major, close by metropolitan areas that most people live
| in.
|
| The Midwest, as an example, has roughly the same size and
| population as France with a larger economy. In fact, if you
| overlay the French TGV network onto the Midwest with
| Chicago where Paris is, you get a pretty good approximation
| of where major Midwestern cities are located:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/NMr3J3gt8C
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Who says anything about "only?" Japan is home to a thriving
| car industry.
|
| If anything, right now America is tilted heavily to car-only.
| amacbride wrote:
| > This liberal zoning system is reinforced by private access to
| city planning powers. Thirty percent of Japan's urban land has
| been subject to land readjustment, where agreement among two
| thirds of residents and landowners in an area is enough to allow
| its replanning, including compulsorily taking and demolishing
| land for amenities and infrastructure.
|
| I think this is the key paragraph because (like it or not) a lot
| of Americans would be philosophically opposed to this sort of
| process (the Kelo decision on eminent domain notwithstanding.)
| rayiner wrote:
| I'm glad the article confronts the "culture versus policy"
| argument. But I think it overlooks the degree to which policy
| reflects culture. Japanese rail policy reflects a combination of
| Big Government regulation and privatization that has no
| significant constituency in the U.S.
|
| In the U.S., the folks who like public transit would never go for
| having rail stations be owned by conglomerates that get nearly
| half their profit from retail and real estate activities adjacent
| to the stations: https://www.patiencerealty.com/post/the-story-
| of-how-privati.... It makes perfect economic sense. Transit
| creates a positive value for the land around each station. Having
| the rail operators own the station gives them a stake in the
| value created and incentivizes them to prioritize good rail
| service that brings people to the hotels and retail the companies
| own near the stations. But Americans are ideological, not
| pragmatic, and an idea like that is DOA here.
| willmadden wrote:
| I know why Japan has such good railways, and I can also tell you
| that this blog article doesn't mention any them.
| black6 wrote:
| The tragedy of the commons doesn't seem to exist in Japan to
| the same extent it does in Western nations, especially the US.
| As you said: that's largely due to reasons not mentioned in the
| article.
| willmadden wrote:
| Hear, hear! Fun fact: Germany was once famous for its on-time
| trains. You are now lucky if they show up at all.
| seu wrote:
| The article is great and very informative. But I feel there's a
| general vibe of "privatizations are great". For example, they do
| mention that privatizations didn't work in Argentina (they were a
| total mess and the total railway went from something like 50k
| kilometers to two thirds of that - if) but they don't mention
| enough of it - or other cases - to understand which regulations
| and why worked the way they did. It feels too much like it's all
| about integrating corporations, and that's it.
| ColonelBlimp wrote:
| I'm not surprised that the article has that vibe and that you
| noticed it. Works in Progress, the magazine that published the
| article, is notorious for having a preference for market-
| oriented solutions, "laissez faire" policies and neoliberalism.
| They are open about it. Nothing wrong with that, of course.
| vantassell wrote:
| > Japan is one of the only countries to have privatized parking.
| In Europe and North America, vast quantities of parking space is
| socialized: municipalities own the streets and allow people to
| park on them at low or zero cost. Initially with the intention of
| encouraging the provision of more parking spaces, Japan made it
| illegal to park on public roads or pavements without special
| permission. Before someone buys a car, they must prove that they
| have a reserved night-time space on private land, either owned or
| leased.
|
| This is got to be a huge factor. Making everyone pay for "free
| parking" through inefficient use of space is such a waste. I
| strongly recommend everyone to read Donald Shoup's "The High
| Price of Free Parking".
| newsclues wrote:
| Makes you consider the cost of anything that is "free"
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Before someone buys a car, they must prove that they have a
| reserved night-time space on private land, either owned or
| leased.
|
| > This is got to be a huge factor.
|
| If the USA implemented that exact rule, it would change almost
| nothing. People already need nighttime parking for non-legal
| reasons.
| mjamesaustin wrote:
| You are dramatically misinformed. Where I live in Los
| Angeles, a very large number of people park their cars
| primarily or exclusively on the street.
|
| Such a change would have a significant impact.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Where I live in Los Angeles, a very large number of
| people park their cars primarily or exclusively on the
| street.
|
| > Such a change would have a significant impact.
|
| What would that impact be? Do you see, or experience, a lot
| of contention for nighttime parking?
|
| There's plenty of contention for street parking in
| nonresidential areas. But a nighttime parking certificate
| doesn't do anything about that. Nighttime parking is done
| in residential areas.
| Tumblewood wrote:
| Not the person you're replying to, but I see the same
| thing happen in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.
| Dense neighborhood with a lot of nightlife, but many of
| its residents exclusively use free street parking to park
| overnight. There is a lot of contention for spots after
| about 7pm.
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's not like you have to get waivers to park your cars
| in _front of_ your house in Japan. Your car MUST have a
| designated lot, with proofs(more or less a set of simple
| declaration forms than anything detailed and concrete),
| to be registered under your name. Otherwise it cannot be
| registered. A full waiver for parking violations
| technically exist, but they are reserved for official and
| /or actually special vehicles only(like actual fire
| trucks). The vast majority of cars stay in an off-of-road
| parking lot of some sort, be it a fancy mechanical one or
| a crude gravel lot next to apartment complex.
|
| I reckon that not many other country do that kind of
| legal setup. But Japan is among those very few.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| If you tried that your politicians would get tossed out of
| office the next election.
|
| Your argument totally ignores that all this infrastructure
| was built around using cars. Doing things like banning
| street parking doesn't magically reorganize the way
| everything was built out over the last 100 years. Took a
| 100 years to build this will take 100 or more years to undo
| it.
|
| I'm also suspicious the people pushing stuff like that
| would in a different time and place would be wearing hair
| shirts and flagellating themselves. All nice but that's not
| most people.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Perhaps you've never lived in a large American city? In many
| cities you can't even park on the street overnight in
| residential neighborhoods because the parking is permitted
| for people who live in that neighborhood. Without the right
| sticker (or a guest permit from a resident) your car is
| getting ticketed or towed, formalizing the usage of overnight
| street parking for residents.
|
| In Chicago, for example, many neighborhoods are full of
| former single family homes that at some point (often long
| ago) were converted into 2 or 3 unit residences, but there is
| still likely only one garage that maybe fits two vehicles. If
| you've got units filled with 2-3 roommates each, there might
| be 9 cars for a building with only 2 spots.
|
| Obviously I'm not arguing this is good, but that's the way
| things are for now.
| ericmay wrote:
| The main low-hanging fruit is just removing surface parking
| lots in American downtowns and stopping the development and
| expansion of highways through the same. If you did nothing else
| that would have a significant positive impact. For almost all
| communities those surface parking lots are economic extracts
| from the community. They're woefully underpriced for tax
| purposes too.
| spike021 wrote:
| Maybe the parking lots, but if you know anything about the
| major Japanese cities with satisfyingly good train systems
| then you'll also know they have a lot of expressways running
| through them.
| ericmay wrote:
| Yes, I do love the rail system in Japan. Went a few years
| ago, going back next year most likely. I've also driven in
| Japan (Osaka). I just meant, in general, a low-hanging
| fruit we could tackle is making surface parking lots a
| thing of the past in downtown or urban areas. With actual
| economically productive constructs there instead, such as
| business, retail, housing, parks, &c. we could pretty much
| get to the density where trams make sense, and in some
| cities we could work on intra-city rail too.
|
| I think where I live (Columbus) is very well positioned for
| this model if only our civic leaders had courage and
| stopped thinking of transit as a "blue" thing (also our
| city council needs to stop suburban thinking). We don't
| need to build any more expressways or highways. We are
| maxed out. The only sane option is respecting appropriate
| density, and focusing on categorical changes in how we move
| people: walk/bike/rail instead of bus/car/roadways.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| That won't fix the cost of rail in America, which is the main
| reason America doesn't have better rail. Look at California
| high speed rail or light rail in Seattle. They have insane
| costs per mile, are still very over budget, falling behind
| schedule, and basically are forever grifts. The availability of
| parking is unrelated to these issues. It comes back to
| mismanagement and corruption.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| Can you explain how Seattle is an example? They're opening
| new lines, Link is packed often, seems like a well used
| reliable service, but I only visit once or twice a year.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| It's been a while since I read about their system but as I
| recall, across the entire system something like 100 billion
| is the total cost. But that's only for like 75 ish miles.
| So it's very expensive. I recently saw a news article
| saying they're 30 billion short per their projections and
| are now cutting lines out of the plan that voters expected
| when they supported levies, and some surrounding cities
| where residents have each paid hundreds or more a year for
| the rail to come to them, now may not get them at all. Even
| though they've been paying into it for a decade or two.
| Which to me is a form of theft.
| jltsiren wrote:
| The cost of passenger rail is high in America, because
| America doesn't build enough rail.
|
| If you try building a single megaproject, nobody knows what
| they are doing, everything is inefficient, and mistakes will
| be made. But you learn by doing. If the individual projects
| are small enough that there are always multiple projects in
| various stages, you develop and maintain expertise. Then you
| can build things cost-effectively and finish the projects in
| time.
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| > The cost of passenger rail is high in America, because
| America doesn't build enough rail.
|
| The cost of passenger rail is high in America because
| America has 11% of the population (read: customer) density
| of Japan.
|
| (For cities, NYC has 25% lower population density than
| Tokyo.)
| wahern wrote:
| Dividing population by total land area is a horribly
| misleading way to understand density. There are
| alternatives, like population-weighted density, that give
| you a better picture: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers
| .cfm?abstract_id=3119965 Here's a blog post where
| somebody re-invented the concept and analyzed density in
| Europe: https://theconversation.com/think-your-country-
| is-crowded-th...
|
| The population-weighted density of the US is roughly
| similar to continental Europe.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Street parking makes suburbs worse, too. Almost everybody in my
| neighborhood has their garages piled to the ceiling with junk
| and parks in the street, which makes it a pain to weave through
| even for someone driving a compact crossover... I can't imagine
| what kind of hell it is for trash and delivery drivers having
| to squeeze huge trucks and vans through without swiping
| peoples' cars.
| bluebarbet wrote:
| And that's without mentioning what's like for the lowest of
| the low (in the USA): pedestrians.
| gonzalohm wrote:
| In which part of Europe is cheap to park?
| ciupicri wrote:
| Romania. Even its capital and the largest city - Bucharest -
| is still pretty cheap, sometimes even free like in this
| example on Google Street View
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/r6TFFtHbj2SELTqY9 If you're willing
| to take the risk which is pretty low, you can even park it on
| the sidewalk like here
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/y6DNVBdR2KvJsA917
|
| But times are changing. Lanes and sidewalks, sometimes even
| green spaces, are being converted to parking spaces, so
| there's less spaces for freeloading. They're also becoming
| more and more expensive. The residential ones have also been
| hard to get and it will probably become even harder to get as
| more drivers will need them as the risk of getting a fine
| increases.
| bluebarbet wrote:
| Not Paris and especially not if you have an SUV: 225EUR for
| six hours (sic). But unlike Tokyo the average narrow street
| in Paris is still lined with parked cars from end to end, so
| apparently the fees are still too low.
| PacificSpecific wrote:
| Wow weird. I've lived there and never knew but now that you've
| pointed that out I'm realizing we never parked on the street.
| It's always at the house or the parking lot of the place we're
| going.
|
| Of course 95% of the time we take the train. Only use a car to
| go to Costco or possibly go out to the country (even then a lot
| of remote areas are super accessible in public transit)
| vondur wrote:
| I think it is. You have to prove that you have a space to park
| your car and if you have space at your house, they come to
| measure and verify that you do. I don't mind parking for places
| that you are visiting, but you need to have your own parking
| and not depend on the street for it.
| m104 wrote:
| Alright whippersnappers, let's chat about the history of
| railroads in the US.
|
| In the early 20th century, US rail companies were beholding a
| very favorable situation: high demand to run loads of heavy
| freight all over the country, high demand to ferry passengers all
| over the country, and basically no serious competitors to either
| revenue source.
|
| Now freight revenue was never going to be transformative to the
| industry, but it had the benefits of being reliable, un-fussy,
| and fairly easy to build a financial business around. Passengers,
| on the other hand, offered huge revenue potential, but had the
| downsides of being very fussy about things like safety and
| comfort and timeliness, along with wanting stations in convenient
| places and an ever-expanding rail network.
|
| Students of US business management history should be unsurprised,
| then, that while evaluating the market that offered reliable
| revenue, versus the market that wanted large capital investments,
| the railroads overwhelmingly chose the freight market. In other
| words, US the railroad companies spoke and said _we do not want
| passengers_ loudly and clearly.
|
| The thinking was: passengers can do take the wagons and busses
| and cars and these newfangled airplane thingies, but freight is a
| guaranteed market for us! So the passengers slowly migrated to
| other form of transportation. But the kicker was, freight _also_
| wanted things like timeliness and access to an expanding
| transport network and, shockingly for the railroad execs, _were
| willing to pay for it_.
|
| Add about 80 years, declining rail traffic, and tons of corporate
| mergers, and we have the sad state of US railways today: many
| residents have never seen a railway expansion or shiny new rail
| equipment, much less a real functioning passenger train. It's
| easy and comfortable to say that zoning or regulations or market
| forces allowed US rail to languish, but that would be ignoring
| the part where the industry did not want the customers in the
| first place.
| lordmoma wrote:
| the article didn't even compare with China railways, that's
| weird.
| soruly wrote:
| successful train lines in Japan are all built between CBD and
| some spots / attractions. Odakyu: odawara / hakone, Seibu:
| chichibu, keiou: Takao, toukyuu: Nikko / kinugawa, nankai: Takao.
|
| Tourists spots are usually in the mountains and the CBD is near
| the sea. And residential area is developed between them along the
| lines so the trains carry bidirectional passengers to work or
| relax on the same line, higher utilization keeps ticket fare low.
| threethirtytwo wrote:
| I love how the bar graph didn't include China because China is
| such a small place, basically a rounding error.
| arikrahman wrote:
| I have a hard time believing China doesn't make the list with how
| much rail they have.
| Nevermark wrote:
| A decentralized alternative would be making proportional
| ownership of railway stock, relative to distance from a rail
| station, a condition of business permits.
|
| Suddenly all the businesses will be very pro-rail, as they
| benefit both directly and indirectly from its competent
| management, capacity growth and reach, even far from their own
| business. Especially far from their business.
|
| Not claiming to know this works, but there are often many ways to
| solve a problem once the problem is well characterized. This
| insight that rail creates a great deal of indirect value is
| really helpful.
|
| Indirect value is a battery. Voltage. Ready to power economic
| growth along whatever path the created-value to investment-return
| circuit gets closed.
| johnea wrote:
| > The Midwest was once criss-crossed by a network of
| 'interurbans', essentially intercity trams. In the United States,
| these lines have vanished
|
| They just "vanished"! Man, I hate it when that happens. You leave
| a railroad outside with out a lid on it for too long and it just,
| you know, evaporates! What a drag...
|
| What an amazing evasion of reality/truth, another classic use of
| the passive voice...
| moralestapia wrote:
| >Rail travel is much more common in Japan
|
| That's not a cause but a consequence.
| decimalenough wrote:
| This made it to the HN front page 4 days ago, under its
| (terrible) previous name "The secrets of the Shinkansen":
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47762060
|
| And the top comment was mine, pointing out a bunch of factual
| mistakes and misleading claims:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47765032
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