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Why Japan has such good railways

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Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#81

Post by dangus »

savanaly wrote: post #78
ttul wrote: post #75

“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 benefitt…

>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.

Sometimes permissive zoning laws don’t actually encourage positive urban development outcomes.

Example: Texas

Zoning has to both exist and be well-designed.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#82

Post by gorfian_robot »

andrewstuart wrote: post #11

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 imp…

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!

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#83

Post by yulker »

ttul wrote: post #75

“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 benefitt…

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

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#84

Post by antirez »

ttul wrote: post #75

“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 benefitt…

"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.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#85

Post by zbrozek »

savanaly wrote: post #78
ttul wrote: post #75

“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 benefitt…

>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.

That's a big part of it. They also do zoning mostly at the federal level, meaning local opposition isn't relevant.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#86

Post by chermi »

dwroberts wrote: post #13
amazingamazing wrote: post #3

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 acc…

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

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.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#87

Post by zbrozek »

dangus wrote: post #81
savanaly wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Sometimes permissive zoning laws don’t actually encourage positive urban development outcomes. Example: Texas Zoning has to both exist and be well-designed.

I bet you'd see natural market driven concentration around rail stations in Texas too, if they had a useful rail network.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#88

Post by the__alchemist »

delecti wrote: post #68
ladberg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that not similar to both the west and east coasts of the US?

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 east coast ("Amtrak") rail blows. Expensive, and slow.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#90

Post by darknavi »

ttul wrote: post #75

“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 benefitt…

A great video on the zoning laws in Japan if anyone wants to nerd out on them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlwQ2Y4By0U

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