How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart • Hacker News Board

Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

#151

Post by Pooge » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 9:32 PM UTC

nixass wrote: post #148

Pooge wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I calculated, you need to use the Shinkansen every day and for long distances which is not how many tourists spend time in Japan IME. This is not a blanket statement as my first sentence is recommending people to make calculations based on their planned trip.

What is long distance in Japan? A day trip from Kyoto to Hiroshima and back? Fukuoka to Kumamoto and back? Tokyo to Nagano and back? Osaka to Kanazawa and back? Tokyo to Nara and back These are all "long" but really not that time-long distances. Shinkansen and regional trains work pretty well for these. And yes, a lot of tourists move between the cities quite often, even some metros accept the JR pass. I was there tw…

Most people I know do not travel Tokyo - Nara and back. They enjoy taking more time in a place while keeping the door open to day trips of course. If you spend more than 1 night in each place and want to do small distances (think Fukuoka to Hiroshima) it really is impossible for it to become a bargain.

Again that's my POV, but since the price hike I've never met someone who got a good deal with the JR Pass.

Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

#152

Post by queenkjuul » Sun, Jun 21, 2026, 5:44 AM UTC

toast0 wrote: post #63

queenkjuul wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Air is exactly the same but there are connections to everywhere from Kansas or Montana or wherever. I really think the rail situation in the US is primarily lack of investment. And it sucks; even here in Chicago where the connections are plentiful, the schedules and frequency are awful.

Air travel is easier to make work because most of the infrastructure is at the airports, not on the routes. Airlines can change routes easier than railroads. The speed of air travel has natural utility. Commercial airplanes come in many sizes... Turboprops can reasonably service small airports that can't fill a 737. Once daily or even a few times a week service from a middle of nowhere airport to a hub opens you up t…

Every town with an airport first had a train station. The airports didn't build themselves, and towns in the West were built on rail lines (overwhelmingly, at least). Trains also come in many sizes (as few as one car, as long as multiple kilometers...)

I still maintain it's an investment problem. Where rail investment was maintained (other parts of the world) it's still widely used.

Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

#153

Post by tokioyoyo » Sun, Jun 21, 2026, 5:39 PM UTC

captainbland wrote: post #75

Liftyee wrote: post #3

A factor not mentioned is Japan's cultural sense of duty and honour. I don't think employees in the West generally feel such dedication or perfectionism towards their company but in Japan it helped make all these efficient and meticulous changes possible, and avoids issues of privatisation like neglecting maintenance / short term profit maximisation.

The short term profit maximisation thing comes from leadership culture rather than employees per se

To be fair, it is the same in Japan.

Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

#154

Post by tokioyoyo » Sun, Jun 21, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

d3Xt3r wrote: post #117

Liftyee wrote: post #3

A factor not mentioned is Japan's cultural sense of duty and honour. I don't think employees in the West generally feel such dedication or perfectionism towards their company but in Japan it helped make all these efficient and meticulous changes possible, and avoids issues of privatisation like neglecting maintenance / short term profit maximisation.

The flip side of that cultural sense of duty is unfortunately a rise in "black" companies (ブラック企業, burakku kigyo ) and employee exploitation[1] leading to very long working hours (often unpaid) and high karojisatsu rates (suicide from overwork / stressful working conditions)[2]. At least in the past, companies like JR East were known for their worker exploitation and unfair policies, leading to decades of hostile lab…

I agree in general, but keep in mind, a lot of things have changed in Japan in the past 10+ years. Quite a bit of labour law changes and etc.

Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

#155

Post by dredmorbius » Sun, Jun 21, 2026, 6:39 PM UTC

bionade24 wrote: post #149

dredmorbius wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Netherlands have implemented unlimited off-peak rail travel for €49/month: https://www.ns.nl/en/season-tickets/dal-vrij > HN discussion 4 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48543872 > Given that many commuter-rail (and frankly, other) transport systems operate well below capacity during off-peak times and in counterflow directions, such pricing could well increase ridership and revenue.

This only is an attractive offer if you don't commute by rail & the country/ticket area is small enough to make avoidance of the peak hours feasible.

I hope it's obvious that the whole idea of an off peak ticketing option is to encourage non-commute transit usage. That is when excess capacity exists. Commuters would pay normal (non-discounted) commute-time rates, though often other incentive programmes exist, varying by locale.

From HN discussion and information elsewhere (including the NL rail site itself), so long as a trip begins off-peak, the off-peak rates apply:

Please note: the time you check in determines whether you will travel with a discount.

https://www.ns.nl/en/season-tickets/dal-vrij> (see FAQs section)

Other systems may of course vary, but typically trip start / time of ticket purchase / time of ticket check determines the applicable rate.

Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

#156

Post by tannenfreund87 » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 8:12 AM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #122

lukan wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can have a roadnetwork as primary means of transport .. or a railnetwork. With roads mainly for the last mile. Where society here and now should invest, what direction to go from from here, is totally up to us. What makes the most sense - preferably in the long run. Cars are pretty shitty for long distances. Rubber tyres wear down the road and create unhealthy dust, way more friction and noise than metalwheel on…

Note that I did not claim that we shouldn't invest in train networks. I questioned the use of taxpayers' money to make train tickets extremely cheap or free when there is no affordability issue to begin with, both in itself and when compared to everything else that public money could be spent on, and the overall situation in many European countries. Personally I think this is having our priorities very wrong. (I also…

The whole idea of making train tickets extremly cheap is to make it "competitive" to cars. Trains are already cheaper to use than cars for a lot of people. But many people already own a car and have to pay the fixed costs per month anyway. Insurance, taxes, depreciation

If they plan a trip, the don't calculate the whole cost of ownershipt, they calculate the distance and how much fuel they need (a.k.a. flexible costs).

An extremely cheap ticket makes the car owners stop using their cars so much. This is not just a benefit for the abstact idea of "environment", but also a direct benefit for the population. Less cars means less noise pollution, less air pollution and more space on the roads. That way people, who actually need a car, van or truck to get around and do their work, benefit.

Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

#157

Post by mytailorisrich » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 11:16 AM UTC

bionade24 wrote: post #150

mytailorisrich wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inconvenient truth: It is a bad use of taxpayers' money to highly subsidise train tickets when (1) people can afford to pay more (2) huge structural investments are needed in the country, (3) economic growth has stalled for years.

> huge structural investments are needed in the country The D-Ticket is completely independent of any (rail) infrastructure financing, those have distinct budges on federal level, since any project has to be approved by the legislature individually. The D-Ticket is eating away the budget of the states and their transit authorities, causing a reduction of services..

You make it sound like "distinct budgets" means unlimited resources... Obviously this is not true and is just an accounting and management tool to allocate limited resources. Hence my previous comment.

Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

#158

Post by socalgal2 » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

tjpnz wrote: post #29

alephnerd wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an age thing. Most HNers are in their 30s-50s so would have been impressed by Japan in the 1990s-2000s. Japan is a decent country but everyone who writes about it tends to overindex on the posh parts of Tokyo.

As someone who's lived in Tokyo for 10 years it's largely met my expectations. My living situation is far more modern than the western country I'm from, even if my suburb looks a bit plain (my only real complaint is that there's too much concrete and not enough trees). Would even go as far as to say many comments about the place being trapped in the 80s or 90s don't match reality. For instance, the only time I've eve…

Needing a fax machine was something from 1998-2005 ish. The USA and Europe had switched to email. Japan was behind.

If you want examples, unless something has changed, if you run a business (for example consulting) and you make a new contract, you must register the contract with the tax office in person. The Japanese government apparently made moves to fix this type of "must be done in person" stuff because of covid. I haven't registered a contract since 2019.