Why Japan has such good railways • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#251

Post by rjh29 » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:20 PM UTC

zdw wrote: post #151

CharlieDigital wrote: post #132

> "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 thi…

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...

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)

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#252

Post by cucumber3732842 » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:35 PM UTC

Tiktaalik wrote: post #121

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.

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 incre…

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.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#253

Post by ghaff » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:36 PM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #54

arcticfox wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cul…

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…

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.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#254

Post by gpvos » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:36 PM UTC

dgellow wrote: post #176

nottorp wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Even the smallest Lidl, Aldi, or REWE are not small shops in the sense meant here.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#255

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:45 PM UTC

CharlieDigital wrote: post #132

> "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 thi…

[deleted]

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#256

Post by WorkerBee28474 » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:47 PM UTC

jltsiren wrote: post #250

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.

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-effect…

> 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.)

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#257

Post by Nevermark » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:49 PM UTC

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.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#258

Post by johnea » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:51 PM UTC

> 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...

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#259

Post by zhdc1 » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:52 PM UTC

cmatza wrote: post #242

zhdc1 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> which can still be far less dense than urbanists really want.

And this was my comparison?

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#260

Post by Barrin92 » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 8:03 PM UTC

newyankee wrote: post #2

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.

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...