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The secrets of the Shinkansen

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Re: The secrets of the Shinkansen

#141

Post by decafninja »

Tor3 wrote: post #117
throw0101d wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "The Japanese love cars, but they take trains because they have the best railway system in the world" > That's exactly it. It's not because of some cultural bias or whatever. Are there not a lot of toll roads in Japan as well? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressways_of_Japan#Tolls Also, is not the population density fairly high? There's not as much land to spread in low-density car centric suburbs like there i…

>Are there not a lot of toll roads in Japan as well? There are, but at least wherever I've been driving or been a passenger, there are alternative roads which are just fine. In general slower, but every so often the toll roads are congested for miles due to a combination of roadwork and a LOT of traffic, which makes them slower than the alternative roads during those times. As for cars - the Japanese aren't against c…

Seoul is like this too. People look at the transit system and think it’s a model for car-less living. And while it’s fantastic, many Seoulites also love their cars. Those massive clusters of dense highrise apartment buildings you see everywhere? Most sit atop vast underground garage complexes.

Re: The secrets of the Shinkansen

#142

Post by decafninja »

sho wrote: post #121
4ggr0 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i mean the Shinkansen has two classes as well :)

three, now!

As do some European high speed trains. I make it a point to book first class (or equivalent) tickets as that often comes with lounge access at the stations - which lets you mostly avoid the rampant pickpocketing and other petty crime that absolutely infests many European train stations.

Re: The secrets of the Shinkansen

#143

Post by foxyv »

Animats wrote: post #13

Japan's railroad system has a big geographic advantage - the country is long and narrow. The railroad system is primarily a long end to end line with short crosswise branches.[1] That's an efficient structure. The branch lines don't have to be fast. Many are still narrow gauge, at 3 ft 6 in. The US had to fill a huge area in the railroad era. That left a lot of underutilized track once the road network got good. [1]…

It has very little to do with Japan's geography. It's actually because Japan was too poor after World War 2 to implement a road system. The rail companies were also the land developers so the train service operated at a loss and were essentially a value add to the real estate development projects.

This type of development is called TOD (Transit Oriented Development)

https://www.ur-net.go.jp/overseas/urtod.html

Re: The secrets of the Shinkansen

#144

Post by enaaem »

l5870uoo9y wrote: post #5

It’s fascinating to read but I have a hard time imagining a public western railway provider could evolve into a train based mega corporation doing real estate and health services.

I believe American rail companies used to built whole towns. I am kinda surprised why a hyper capitalistic country like the US never developed this concept further?

It's brilliant if you think about it. By building super convenient rail transport you essentially lock people into your territory and businesses. They go by foot so they can't get far. If they want to go somewhere else, they probably have to take your rail network and only end up at your other properties. With some aggressive horizontal integration, you can essentially built a small kingdom.

Re: The secrets of the Shinkansen

#145

Post by pezezin »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #102
throw0101d wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "The Japanese love cars, but they take trains because they have the best railway system in the world" > That's exactly it. It's not because of some cultural bias or whatever. Are there not a lot of toll roads in Japan as well? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressways_of_Japan#Tolls Also, is not the population density fairly high? There's not as much land to spread in low-density car centric suburbs like there i…

I have read you also need to prove you have a place to park a car in order to own one. (And as you point out, space is limited.)

In the villages (村) you don't need to, but anything bigger than that yes, you need a parking lot.

The procedure for the permit in my city is maddening, you need to draw a map of your general area and your parking lot BY HAND, and then several days later a police guy will go there to confirm it visually. They have not invented GIS yet...

Re: The secrets of the Shinkansen

#146

Post by Tor3 »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #131
Tor3 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the Japanese private rail companies also own the lines where their traffic is. This would explain a lot. There are other countries (including my native one) where the trains are run by one company and the lines are owned by another. This does.not.work. For what seems like obvious reasons. There's no economic gain for the owner of the infrastructure to spend money, quite the opposite in fact.

Many of these lines were built by the public, then privatized.

But maintained and extended today by e.g. JR Eeast.

Re: The secrets of the Shinkansen

#147

Post by razorbeamz »

kevmo314 wrote: post #134
Conan_Kudo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple doesn't make regional variants of the phone, so all models have the technology built-in, even if it's disabled by default. Android phones outside of Japan lack Suica support.

Ahh interesting. I wonder why they (non-Apple) did that?

There's a chip required for it that they cheaped out on.

Re: The secrets of the Shinkansen

#148

Post by socalgal2 »

kgwgk wrote: post #104
socalgal2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's got zero to do with anything. you do not need to add rail to the whole country. As an example SF Bay Area and Switzerland are about the same size, SF has double the population density. It has a Bay, Switzerland has mountains. Switzerland has like 10x the trains. There's no reason SF Bay couldn't too. It's similar for most metro areas. LA used to have a huge train system. Bad insentives and government policies…

> As an example SF Bay Area and Switzerland are about the same size, > SF has double the population density. These two statements seem hard to reconcile considering that Switzerland’s population is higher.

You're right my memory was bad.

Both the SF Bay Area (not SF, the whole Bay), and Switzerland have ~8 million people.

SF Bay Area is 7K sq miles, Switzerland is ~15k sq miles

The point is still correct. Switzerland has half the density but it has amazing transporation. There's no excuse for SF Bay Area not to as well.

Re: The secrets of the Shinkansen

#149

Post by kalleboo »

skrebbel wrote: post #95
angled wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah! But is your bicycle registered and do you have insurance. (I agree with the trains. I love the trains.)

People insure bikes?

It's not insuring the bike itself, it's insuring damages for accidents while riding it.

If you run into someone on your bike, you're on the hook for their medical costs (yes even in Japan's universal health care system, it's not single-payer), loss of income, etc.

Insurance will pay for that. It's now legally required to hold bicycle insurance in most cities in Japan when riding for this reason, similar to requiring basic car insurance.

Re: The secrets of the Shinkansen

#150

Post by kalleboo »

Shitty-kitty wrote: post #37
wahern wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the country is long and narrow The northeast and west coast metropolitan corridors are similar, and combined have comparable populations, densities, and distances as Japan. Yet we can't even build a single high-speed line. And for all the excuses about the difficulty of building rail through developed regions, the existing rights of ways and infrastructure in both the NE and California are comparable to what everyb…

The advatange they have is that all 4 of their major metropolitan areas are in a straight line across flat land. The enemy of high-speed is any diviations from flat and straigh. On he accela top speed can be maintained less then 40% of the trip.

Japan isn't that flat. The Tokaido Shinkansen has 70km of tunnels (12% of the route), and for the new maglev Shinkansen, they're boring 250 km of tunnels (90% of the route!)
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