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Tokyo's oldest train line – in pictures

theguardian.com

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Re: Tokyo's oldest train line – in pictures

#101

Post by kjkjadksj »

postalrat wrote: post #95
antisthenes wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not it at all. Leadership can either set up remote work for failure or for success through top-down policy. You're also assuming some kind of perfect instantaneous feedback mechanism exists to measure productivity and adjust the remote/office work on the fly. It doesn't and never will.

Over time trends will be visible and used to make decisions. It's not instantaneous at all.

People aren’t randomly assigning wfh and measuring output though its just whatever middle management think is right. If this stuff were informed by data the office would have died in 1995.

Re: Tokyo's oldest train line – in pictures

#102

Post by kjkjadksj »

renewiltord wrote: post #4
darknavi wrote: post #2

If you've ever stayed in the heart of Tokyo you know the JR Yamanote line well. What a feat for Japan to have it. I always thought trains (light rail, high speed, what ever) were so much better than cars. Have more traffic? Just add more trains, no extra rails needed. Yamanote line rush hour showed me how effective that is AND how you might need more rail eventually. Rush hour had a train there every ~2 minutes and t…

It's great to use as a tourist. Very easy to get where you want and top notch frequency. One thing I thought was interesting is that transit advocates in the California I was visiting from push for free transit and transit sucks balls here while Japan generally was fee-paid transit and their transit ruled. I frequently travel to Hong Kong and I moved to California from London and so I looked them up and they hadn't t…

The funding mechanisms are different. LA metro gets a lot of funding from sales tax initiatives. Iirc the farebox only covers like 5% of the operating budget and the median rider is making less than like $25k which is why they were considering making it free.

Re: Tokyo's oldest train line – in pictures

#103

Post by kjkjadksj »

linguae wrote: post #80
bobthepanda wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eh, this is the cart before the horse. the US had public frequent transit systems at the turn of the century. the problem was they couldn't compete with brand new free Interstates. It's hard to compete with free.

This issue was compounded by the death of streetcar lines across America, being replaced with buses. In Tokyo some of these streetcar lines evolved into subway and train lines. For example, the stretch of the modern Tokyu Den-en-Toshi Line that goes from Shibuya to Futakotamagawa (where Rakuten’s global headquarters are located) replaced the old Tokyu Tamagawa Line, which was a streetcar line. In an alternate univers…

The issue with the la streetcar network was that it was designed specifically to sell Henry Huntington’s land tracts. Once he sold that off he didn’t much care if the remaining transit network could actually stand on its own two legs. Some lines were frequent like downtown lines but these days there are a lot of interlining busses going downtown where you really could have multiple busses a minute coming in on a street. Other lines were a lot worse than today like the line that connected santa monica to LA, which eventually only ran once a day in contrast to todays expo line running every 8 minutes or so.

Re: Tokyo's oldest train line – in pictures

#104

Post by kjkjadksj »

bobthepanda wrote: post #50
simonw wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "politically vulnerable" point is good. Almost all public transit ends up heavily subsidized, so the argument for free is that it's not a huge difference, and it reduces the costs involved in collecting fees / enforcement etc. But yeah, it's easier for political winds to blow against it.

It is generally not a huge difference in small systems like you find in college towns. It is a pretty substantial portion of most major transit agency budgets; BART for example has a farebox recovery of about a third. If you were to totally make it free you would need to basically increase the other sources of funding by 50%.

LA metro fairbox recovery is like 5% fwiw. Look up median income levels too on that system and you might be inclined to slash fares.

Re: Tokyo's oldest train line – in pictures

#105

Post by kjkjadksj »

ayuhito wrote: post #96
mym1990 wrote: post #28

Wholly unrelated but one thing that struck me about the photos here is that almost all the people in them are looking at phones. This was a little crazy to me in the times I have visited, when I would get on the train and there was this eerie silence as almost every person was looking at their phone. No real point to my anecdote, just an observation. Also the stained glass(maybe just acrylic or something) at Mejiro S…

As someone who has to regularly commute one of these lines… doing “nothing” does become very dull after a while. I think this thread is a little overblown. Some people will do nothing, read a book, listen to music, or nap. But the easiest thing to fall back to is your phone, especially for a monotonous daily commute. I do at least try to be productive when using the phone, such as practicing my Japanese. But I think…

I love doing nothing on the train to work. One of the few times a day I can sit and think my own organic thoughts for a decent chunk of time. There’s something to be said about how modern society sees people fill every free second with staring at content probably designed to influence you against your best interests in some way.

Re: Tokyo's oldest train line – in pictures

#106

Post by soruly »

sofixa wrote: post #6
darknavi wrote: post #2

If you've ever stayed in the heart of Tokyo you know the JR Yamanote line well. What a feat for Japan to have it. I always thought trains (light rail, high speed, what ever) were so much better than cars. Have more traffic? Just add more trains, no extra rails needed. Yamanote line rush hour showed me how effective that is AND how you might need more rail eventually. Rush hour had a train there every ~2 minutes and t…

> I always thought trains (light rail, high speed, what ever) were so much better than cars. Have more traffic? Just add more trains, no extra rails needed. Yamanote line rush hour showed me how effective that is AND how you might need more rail eventually. Rush hour had a train there every ~2 minutes and they were still packed. I mean they are much better, but this is only true to a point. You can't get better than…

and yes they did. aside from the keihin touhoku line that's already running in parallel with yamanote line, JR East added a new track called ueno-tokyo line about 10 years ago. And the trains on the new lines are mostly 15-cars (with 2 double decker cars!). Note that for passengers travelling north-south they can also take the west route (going through shinjuku instead of tokyo), and there're also 3 parallel lines on the west. JR runs on narrow gauge which takes less space, and is cheaper to construct. Maybe this is one reason to make these expansion project fesible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ueno%E2%80%93Tokyo_Line

Re: Tokyo's oldest train line – in pictures

#107

Post by bobthepanda »

linguae wrote: post #80
bobthepanda wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eh, this is the cart before the horse. the US had public frequent transit systems at the turn of the century. the problem was they couldn't compete with brand new free Interstates. It's hard to compete with free.

This issue was compounded by the death of streetcar lines across America, being replaced with buses. In Tokyo some of these streetcar lines evolved into subway and train lines. For example, the stretch of the modern Tokyu Den-en-Toshi Line that goes from Shibuya to Futakotamagawa (where Rakuten’s global headquarters are located) replaced the old Tokyu Tamagawa Line, which was a streetcar line. In an alternate univers…

One major difference is that the streetcar companies in the US sold the land whereas Japanese companies held on to the choicest parcels to self-develop.

This meant that 50 years later when everything was at end of life, the streetcar companies could not repeat the trick.

Re: Tokyo's oldest train line – in pictures

#108

Post by bobthepanda »

Avicebron wrote: post #66
bobthepanda wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eh, this is the cart before the horse. the US had public frequent transit systems at the turn of the century. the problem was they couldn't compete with brand new free Interstates. It's hard to compete with free.

Well for context, outside of an EZ pass, it costed me about 7$ each way to get from Oakland(hills) to Foster City roughly each way, and I had to drive my own car. And for reference, we call them freeways ;) legacy i know.

I mean, parking in this lot in Chiyoda is 400JPY for 20 minutes. https://www.parkme.com/en-gb/lot/275008/-tokyo-japan

That's a significantly higher parking rate than I've ever seen charged in the US. And generally in Japan street parking is not permitted in busy areas.

Re: Tokyo's oldest train line – in pictures

#109

Post by c22 »

SapporoChris wrote: post #77
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just let people work from home if they can? Society seems to be dead set on certain ceremonies that aren’t technically needed.

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/remote-work-statisti... "As of 2023, 12.7% of full-time employees work from home", this appears to be data for USA only. Certainly that percentage can be increased, but not all jobs can be worked remotely. It will help congestion but won't eliminate it. Also, fun fact, not all traffic during rush hour is from commuting to work.

A large fraction of jobs that can't be done remotely are shift work where shifts are distributed all around the day.

Re: Tokyo's oldest train line – in pictures

#110

Post by ErigmolCt »

darknavi wrote: post #2

If you've ever stayed in the heart of Tokyo you know the JR Yamanote line well. What a feat for Japan to have it. I always thought trains (light rail, high speed, what ever) were so much better than cars. Have more traffic? Just add more trains, no extra rails needed. Yamanote line rush hour showed me how effective that is AND how you might need more rail eventually. Rush hour had a train there every ~2 minutes and t…

The remarkable efficiency and effectiveness of urban rail systems.
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