Why Japan has such good railways • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#241

Post by Gibbon1 » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:04 PM UTC

mjamesaustin wrote: post #210

thaumasiotes wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

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.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#242

Post by cmatza » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:06 PM UTC

zhdc1 wrote: post #168

ianm218 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#243

Post by cosmic_cheese » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:08 PM UTC

vantassell wrote: post #174

> 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 ca…

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.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#244

Post by ghaff » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:08 PM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #227

rayiner wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#245

Post by enaaem » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:11 PM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #17

testing22321 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 i…

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.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#246

Post by tracerbulletx » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:13 PM UTC

SeanLuke wrote: post #46

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 won…

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.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#247

Post by numpad0 » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:14 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #218

mjamesaustin wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 parkin…

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.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#248

Post by skrebbel » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:14 PM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #186

skrebbel wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Fair. It'd turn into a Japan and a half (big one on the right, small one the left)

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#249

Post by SilverElfin » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:16 PM UTC

n8cpdx wrote: post #238

SilverElfin wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#250

Post by jltsiren » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:17 PM UTC

SilverElfin wrote: post #233

vantassell wrote: post #174

> 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 ca…

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.

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.